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THE   RED   MAN  AND    THE   WHITE   MAN 
IN  NORTH  AMERICA 


THE  RED  MAN  AND  THE  WHITE  MAN 


IN 


NORTH   AMERICA 


FROM 


ITS    DISCOVERY   TO   THE  PRESENT  TIME 


BY 


GEORGE     E.    ELLIS 


BOSTON 
LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND   COMPANY 

1882 


Copyright,  1882, 
BY  GEORGE  E.  ELLIS. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS: 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE. 


THIS    VOLUME 
IS  RESPECTFULLY  AND  GRATEFULLY  INSCRIBED  TO 

FRANCIS    PARKMAN, 

WHOSE  GENIUS  AND  ATTAINMENTS;  WHOSE  PATIENT  AND  LABORIOUS  STUDIES  FOR 
NEARLY  TWO-SCORE  YEARS;  WHOSE  EXTENDED  TRAVELS  THROUGH  THE 
WILDER  PARTS  OP  THIS  CONTINENT  FOR  PERSONAL  INTERCOURSE  WITH 
THE  INDIANS  ;  AND  WHOSE  PERSEVERING  RESEARCH  THROUGH  FOREIGN 
ARCHIVES,  HAVE  MADE  HIM  A  MASTER  OF  THE  GREAT  THEME  WHICH 
HE  HAS  ALREADY  ILLUSTRATED  IN  SEVEN  VOLUMES,  —  STILL  AWAITING 
OTHERS,  —  COVERING  THE  PERIOD  OF 

EXPLORATION,  ENTERPRISE,   AND  DOMINION  OF  FRANCE 
IN  NORTH  AMERICA. 


PREFACE. 


THE  study  and  research  given  to  the  preparation 
of  the  contents  of  this  volume  have  occupied  much 
of  the  time  of  the  writer  for  more  than  ten  years. 
Portions  of  it,  under  titles  indicated  by  those  of  its 
chapters,  were  the  substance  of  a  course  of  Lectures 
delivered  between  February  18  and  March  28,  1879, 
before  the  Lowell  Institute  of  Boston. 

I  have  been  disinclined  to  present,  in  such  a 
number  and  array  of  foot-notes  as  would  have  been 
necessary,  all  the  sources  of  information,  the  author- 
ity for  statements,  or  the  grounds  for  opinions  and 
conclusions  on  which  I  have  relied.  To  have  done 
this  would  have  required  something  but  little  short 
of  a  complete  bibliography  of  the  copious  and  mul- 
tiform literature  relating  to  our  aborigines.  What 
may  be  classed  as  the  Public  Documents  illustrative 
of  it  are  very  voluminous,  and  are  of  course  of  the 
highest  authority  and  value.  General  and  local 
histories  have  from  time  to  time  given  sometimes 
thorough,  but  often  only  superficial,  attention  to  the 


Till  PREFACE. 


more  important  relations  of  this  interesting  theme. 
Travellers,  tourists,  hunters,  explorers,  scientific 
commissions,  military  officers,  missionaries,  traders, 
and  those  who  have  lived  among  the  Indians  many 
years,  as  captives  taken  in  youth,  have  contributed 
volumes  of  great  variety  in  style,  contents,  views, 
opinions,  and  judgments,  all  of  them  mutually  il- 
lustrative, helpful,  and  instructive,  though  by  no 
means  in  accord  in  their  representations  of  the 
character  and  habits,  condition,  capacity,  religion, 
and  general  development  of  the  various  tribes  of  the 
red  men,  at  different  periods  and  in  different  parts 
of  the  country.  A  single  paragraph,  sometimes  a 
single  sentence,  in  the  following  pages,  is  a  digest 
or  summary  of  facts,  statements,  or  opinions,  gath- 
ered from  several  volumes,  after  an  attempt  at  a 
fair  estimate  of  the  fidelity  and  judgment  of  their 
authors.  Considering  how  rich  in  material,  inci- 
dent, and  character  the  whole  subject  is  for  the 
literature  of  romance,  it  is  surprising  how  little  it 
has  prompted  of  that  character.  Probably  this  is  to 
be  accounted  to  the  stern  reality  in  fact  and  record, 
which  has  disinclined  writers  and  readers  to  idealize 
its  actors  and  incidents.  Indians,  as  subjects  for 
romance,  may  engage  a  class  of  writers  in  an  age 
to  come. 

For  the  reason  stated  above  for  limiting  the  num- 
ber of  foot-notes,  I  have  given  only  such  as  authen- 
ticate the  more  important  statements  and  sources 


PREFACE.  IX 

of  information  indicated  in  the  text  of  the  volume. 
The  opinions  which  I  have  ventured  to  express  on 
contested  points  I  must  leave  to  be  estimated  for 
their  weight  or  wisdom  by  different  readers. 

Occasional  repetitions  in  references  to  persons, 
incidents,  or  facts  may  be  noticed  in  the  following 
pages,  as  they  present  themselves  in  some  different 
relations  to  periods  or  subjects  under  which  the 
contents  of  the  volume  are  disposed. 

BOSTON,  June  1,  1882. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

GENERAL  SURVEY  OF  THE  SUBJECT. 
PAGES  1-38. 

Origin  of  the  Name  Indian,  1.  Archseology  of  the  Continent,  4.  In- 
dian Antiquities,  5.  The  New  Continent,  7.  Its  Promises  and  its 
Illusions,  9.  Wilderness  Attractions,  11.  The  Boon  to  Humanity, 
13.  Grandeur  and  Extent,  15.  Vanished  Tribes,  17.  The  In- 
dian Nemesis,  19.  Benefits  and  Wrongs  from  the  Europeans,  21. 
Queen  Isabella  pleading  for  the  Savages,  23.  Early  Efforts  for  the 
Indians,  25.  The  Children  of  Nature,  27.  First  Relations  be- 
tween the  Races,  29.  Broken  Promises,  31.  Steady  Pressure  upon 
the  Indians,  33.  The  Present  "  Indian  Question,"  35.  The  Fate 
of  the  Aborigines,  37. 

CHAPTER  I. 

SPANISH  DISCOVERERS  AND  INVADERS. 
PAGES  39-84. 

Columbus's  First  Meeting  with  the  Natives,  40.  First  Acts  of  Vio- 
lence, 42.  The  Colony  of  Navidad,  43.  Its  Fate,  45.  Hostilities 
and  Alliances  with  Natives,  47.  The  Hammock  and  the  Hurri- 
cane, 49.  Ruthless  Spirit  of  the  Invaders,  51.  The  Church  and 
Heathendom,  53.  Las  Casas,  54.  Religion  of  Conquest,  55.  Ra- 
pacity and  Zeal,  57.  The  "  Requisition,"  59.  The  Natives  as 
Heathen,  61.  Enslaving  of  the  Natives,  63.  Cruelties  and  Out- 
rages, 65.  Transportation  of  Indians  as  Slaves,  67.  Destruction 
or  Conversion,  69.  The  Dominican  Friars,  71.  Doctrines  of  Hell 
and  Baptism,  73.  Human  Sacrifices  and  Cannibalism,  75.  Rav- 
ages of  De  Soto,  77.  The  Spaniards  on  the  Pacific,  79.  Priestly 
Methods,  81.  The  California  Missions,  83. 


Xll  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  INDIAN.  —  His  ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  PERSON,  AND  CHARACTER. 
PAGES  85-139. 

Archaeology,  85.  Communal  Life,  87.  Relative  Place  of  the  Savage, 
89.  Average  Intelligence,  91.  The  Mound  Builders,  93.  Abo- 
riginal Population,  95.  Resources  of  Life,  97.  Endowment  of  the 
Indian,  99.  Indian  Character,  101.  Indian  Qualities,  105.  Cat- 
lin's  Views  of,  100.  Major  Campion's,  101.  General  Custer's 
Opinions  and  Estimate,  104-109.  Lieutenant  Dodge's  Estimate, 
109.  Romantic  Views,  111.  Indian  State  and  Royalty,  113.  Dr. 
Palfrey's  and  Governor  Arnold's  Views,  114.  Indian  Languages, 
117.  Indian  Vocabularies,  119.  Ferocity  of  Savages,  121.  Tor- 
turing of  Prisoners,  123.  A  scene  of  Torture,  125.  Indian  Medi- 
cal Practice,  127.  Health  and  Disease,  131.  The  "  Suderie,"  132. 
Disposal  of  the  Dead,  133.  Religion  of  the  Indians,  136-139. 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  INDIAN  IN  HIS  CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  AND  SURROUNDINGS. 
PAGES  140-206. 

Limitations  of  Savagism,  141.  The  Savage  a  Child  of  Nature,  143. 
Conformed  to  Nature,  145.  Indian  Food  and  Cookery,  147.  Cos- 
tume and  Dwelling,  149.  The  Medicine-Bag,  151.  The  Indian 
on  the  Water-Ways,  153-156.  His  Woods-Craft  and  Rovings,  157. 
Relationship  to  Animals,  159.  Aboriginal  Names,  161.  The 
Indian  Canoe,  165-168.  The  Moccason,  169.  The  Snow-Shoe, 
171.  The  Indian  in  Winter,  173.  His  Cornfields,  175.  Econ- 
omy, 177.  Communication,  179.  Interpreters,  181.  Sign-Lan- 
guage, 183.  Gambling,  185.  Games  and  Amusements,  187.  The 
Hunting- Season,  189.  Superstitions,  191.  A  Warrior,  193.  War- 
Parties,  195.  The  Gantlet  and  the  Torture,  197.  Tribal  Govern- 
ment, 199.  Chieftains  and  Orators,  201.  The  Indian  "  Pony," 
203.  The  Pappooses,  205.  Education,  206. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

INDIAN  TENURE  OF  LAND  AS  VIEWED  BY  EUROPEAN 

INVADERS  AND  COLONISTS. 

PAGES  207-258. 

Our  National  Domain,  208.  Land  Titles,  209.  Right  by  Conquest, 
211.  Indian  Possession,  213.  Thinness  of  Population,  215.  In- 
dian Internecine  Strifes,  217.  Invasion,  219.  Dispossessing  the 


CONTENTS.  Xiii 

Natives,  221.  Rights  of  Nomads,  223.  Royal  Grants,  225.  Eu- 
ropean Claims,  227.  Indians  as  Subjects,  229.  Prerogatives  of 
Civilization,  231.  Over  Barbarism,  233.  Indians  as  "Vermin," 
235.  Scriptural  Authority,  237.  Plea  for  Possession,  239.  In- 
dian Deeds,  241.  Vagueness  of  Indian  Rights,  243.  The  Free 
Wilderness,  245.  Remuneration  to  Indians,  247.  Rights  as  a 
Race,  249.  Encroachments,  251.  European  Occupancy,  253. 
Conveyances  by  Indians,  255.  Policy  of  our  Government,  257. 


CHAPTER   V. 

THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 
PAGES  259-325. 

Mr.  Parkman's  Works  on  "New  France,"  259-262.  The  Spaniards 
in  Florida,  263.  French  Fishing  Voyages,  265.  French  and  Span- 
iards, 267.  The  French  in  Florida,  269.  English  Slave-ships, 
271.  Contests  in  Florida,  273.  De  Gourgues  in  Florida,  275. 
French  in  Acadia,  277.  Champlain  in  Quebec,  279.  His  Indian 
Allies  and  Foes,  281.  French  in  Alabama,  283.  French  in  Louisi- 
ana, 285.  French  Claims,  287.  French  Explorers,  289.  Voya- 
geurs  and  Coureurs  de  Bois,  291.  Frenchmen  becoming  Indians, 
293.  Traders  in  Canada,  295.  Catholics  and  Huguenots,  297. 
Recollets  in  Canada,  299.  French  Half-breeds,  301.  The  Iroquois, 
303.  Huguenots  in  Canada,  305.  Influence  of  the  Priests,  307. 
Death  of  Father  Ralle,  309.  The  Acadians,  311.  Their  Removal, 
313.  Their  Dispersion,  315.  French  and  Indian  War,  317.  Ces- 
sion to  England,  319.  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  321-325. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

COLONIAL  RELATIONS  WITH  THE  INDIANS. 
PAGES  326-367. 

New  England  Colonists,  327.  Permanent  Colonists,  329.  Sales  of 
Land,  331.  War  of  Race,  333.  Purchase  of  Indian  Titles,  335- 
338.  King  Philip's  War,  339.  The  Pequot  War,  341.  Sale  of 
Arms  to  Indians,  343.  Wars  in  Virginia,  345.  Confederation  of 
Colonies,  347.  English  Advances,  349.  Forest  Forts,  351.  For- 
est Sieges,  353.  Indian  Barbarities,  355.  Quakers  in  the  War, 
857.  The  Frontiers,  359.  Military  Roads  and  Posts,  361.  Cap- 
tives in  the  Wilderness,  363.  Indianized  Whites,  365.  Roamers 
and  Settlers,  366,  367. 


XIV  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

MISSIONARY  EFFORTS  AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 
PAGES   368-476. 

General  Remarks  on  Mission  Aims  and  Efforts,  369.  Different  Esti- 
mates of  the  Work,  371.  Discordant  Teachings,  373.  Salvation 
and  Civilization,  375.  The  Gospel  Message,  377.  Differences  of 
Method,  379.  Perplexities  of  Doctrine,  381.  An  Indian  Agnostic, 
383.  —  Roman  Catholic  Missions,  385.  The  First  Converts,  387. 
The  Franciscan  Friars,  389.  The  Training  of  the  Jesuits,  391. 
The  Jesuit  ''Relations,"  393.  The  Jesuit  in  Residence,  395. 
Jesuit  Instructions,  397.  The  Success  of  the  Jesuits,  399.  Devo- 
tion of  the  Jesuits,  401.  Tragic  Fate  of  Missionaries,  403.  Jesuit 
Mission  Stations,  405.  Journal  of  a  Jesuit,  407.  Jesuit  Altar 
Ornaments,  409.  Training  of  Indian  Xeophytes,  411.  Conference 
between  Jesuit  and  Indian,  413.  Jesuit  Arguments,  415.  Fate  of 
the  Huron  Missions,  41J..- —  Protestant  Missions,  419.  Delayed  in 
Massachusetts,  421.  *<Eliot  and  Mayhew,  423.  Eliot  learning  the 
Indian  Language,M^5.  The  Indians  in  Training,  427.  A  Jesuit 
Diplomatist  in  Boston,  429.  Reception  of  Druillettes,  431.  He 
visits  Eliot,  433.  Eliot's  Cautious  Preparations,  435.  Indian 
Town  at  Natick,  437.  Seclusion  of  the  Indians,  439.  Eliot's 
Faith  and  Perseverance,  441.  The  Indians  in  Argument,  443. 
Indian  Municipality,  445.  Examination  of  Converts,  447.  Eliot's 
Work  in  Translation,  449.  His  Indian  Scholarship,  451.  Written 
Indian  Language,  453.  Printing  of  Indian  Bible,  455.  Prospects 
of  Success,  457.  Calamitous  Experiences,  459.  Panic  in  Philip's 
War,  461.  Removal  of  the  Indians,  463.  Partial  Restoration, 
465.  Indians  at  Harvard  College,  467.  Severity  of  Puritan  Dis- 
cipline, 469.  Eliot's  Successors,  471.  Indians  on  the  Columbia. 
473.  Moravian  Missions,  475. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

RELATIONS  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN  WITH  THE  INDIANS. 
PAGES  477-513. 

British  America,  479-482.  The  Hudson  Bay  Company,  483-490. 
Rivalries  in  the  Fur-Trade,  491.  The  Red  River  Settlement,  493. 
Savage  Allies  of  Great  Britain,  495.  Savage  Neutrals  or  Allies, 
497.  Bourgoyne's  Use  of  Savages,  499.  Washington's  Apprehen- 
sions, 501.  British  Malignant  Policy,  503.  General  Sullivan's 
Campaign,  505.  Embarrassed  Relations,  507.  An  Englishman  at 
Vancouver,  509.  Canadian  Indian  Commission,  511-513. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  UNITED  STATES  GOVERNMENT  AND  THE  INDIANS. 
PAGES  514-552. 

Congressional  Policy,  515.  Conduct  toward  the  Natives,  517.  Diffi- 
culties and  Embarrassments,  519.  Changing  Conditions  of  the 
Problem,  521.  Peace  Medals  for  Chiefs,  523.  Visits  of  Chiefs  to 
Washington,  525.  Wise  and  Helpful  Measures,  527.  Tecumseh's 
Confederacy,  529.  The  Massacre  at  Fort  Mims,  531.  Opinions 
of  our  Statesmen,  533.  Baffled  Statesmanship,  535.  Inconstant 
Policy,  537.  Treaties  in  the  Forest,  539.  Number  and  Terms  of 
Treaties,  541.  Validity  of  the  Treaties,  543.  Violated  Pledges, 
545.  Spoils  of  the  Black  Hills,  547.  Formalities  of  a  Council, 
549.  Mistakes  in  Management,  551. 

CHAPTER  X. 

MILITARY  AND  PEACE  POLICY  WITH  THE  INDIANS. 
PAGES  553-586. 

Present  Relations  with  the  Indians,  554.  As  Neighbors,  555.  Pres- 
ent Embarrassments,  557.  The  Indian  Bureau,  559.  Strictures 
on  the  War  Policy,  561.  Faults  of  the  Peace  Commission,  563- 
565.  Conflicting  Charges,  567.  Wasted  Benevolence,  569.  Cost 
of  Peace  or  War,  571.  Compulsory  Labor,  573.  Modified  Cove- 
nants, 575.  Security  through  Improvements,  577.  The  Indian 
Territory,  579.  Trespasses  on  Reservations,  581.  Semi-Civilized 
Tribes,  583.  Indian  Communism,  585. 

CHAPTER  XL 

THE  INDIANS  UNDER  CIVILIZATION- 
PAGES  587-630. 

Drawbacks  of  Civilization,  589.  Attractions  of  Savagery,  591.  Arbi- 
trary Civilization,  593.  Resistance  to  Civilization,  595.  Nature 
and  Conventionalism,  597.  Enforced  Civilization,  599.  Stages 
of  Progress,  601.  Disappointments  and  Failures,  603.  Reversion- 
ary Instincts,  605-608.  Pleas  for  Savagery,  609.  Indianized 
Whites,  611.  Wliite  Captives  adopted,  613.  Indian  Diplomacy, 
615.  Pleas  against  Civilization,  617.  Civilization  repudiated, 
619.  Forlorn  Remnants  of  Tribes,  621.  Semi- Civilization,  623. 
Domestic  Animals  as  Civilizers,  625.  Patient  and  Persistent  Ef- 
forts, 627.  A  Ray  of  Hope,  629. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


GENERAL  SURVEY  OF  THE  SUBJECT, 


"  WHY  do  you,  White  Men,  call  us  Indians  ? "  This  was 
a  question  asked  many  times,  on  many  occasions,  in  widely 
distant  places,  by  the  aborigines  of  this  country,  when  they 
began  to  converse  familiarly  with  the  new  comers  from 
across  the  sea.  The  question  was  a  very  natural  one  under 
the  circumstances.  The  name  "  Indians"  was  a  strange  one 
to  those  to  whom  it  was  thus  assigned.  They  did  not  know 
themselves  by  the  title.  They  had  never  heard  the  word 
till  the  white  men  addressed  them  by  it.  Courtesy,  in  a 
wilderness  as  well  as  amid  civilized  scenes,  would  have 
seemed  to  allow  that  when  nameless  strangers  met  to  in- 
troduce themselves  to  each  other,  each  party  should  have 
been  at  liberty  to  name  himself.  But  the  savage  curiously 
inquired  of  the  white  man,  "  Why  do  you  call  us  Indians  ?" 
If,  before  giving  an  answer,  the  white  man  had  asked, 
"  What  do  you  call  yourselves  ? "  he  too  would  have  re- 
ceived but  little  satisfaction.  It  does  not  appear  that  our 
aborigines  had  any  one  comprehensive  name,  used  among 
themselves,  to  designate  their  whole  race  on  this  continent. 
They  contented  themselves  with  tribal  or  local  titles. 

Nor  is  it  likely  that  every  white  man  to  whom  the  red 
man  put  the  question,  "  Why  do  you  call  us  Indians  ? " 
would  or  could  have  given  the  intelligible  and  true  answer 

1 


2  INTRODUCTORY. 

to  it.  The  name  applied  to  the  aborigines  of  this  conti- 
nent perpetuates  for  all  time  the  original  illusion  and  lure 
under  the  prompting  and  impulse  of  which  this  continent 
was  first  brought  to  the  knowledge  of  Europeans.  There 
is  myth,  there  is  poetic  legend,  there  may  be  something 
which  looks  like  testimony,  about  visits  by  dwellers  on  the 
Old  World  to  this  so  called  New  World,  before  the  historic 
voyages  of  Columbus  and  his  successors.  But  there  is 
nothing. which  can  stand  the  severest  tests  of  evidence  for 
those  visits  as  matters  of  positive  fact.  At  any  rate,  if 
there  were  such  visits  they  bore  no  fruits,  left  no  tokens  of 
use  or  occupancy,  and  did  not  bring  the  dwellers  on  either 
hemisphere  into  intercourse.  Nor  did  Columbus  when  on 
pur  soil,  not  even  to  the  day  of  his  death,  know  that  he 
had  opened  a  new  continent,  with  a  new  race  of  men.  The 
America  that  we  know,  as  substantially  two  continents,  — 
both  of  them  together  stretching  to  a  greater  length  than 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  —  floating  between  two  vast 
pceans,  was  a  realm  that  he  never  sought,  nor  ever  dreamed 
of,  nor  knew  that  he  had  reached  when  he  stood  upon  it. 

Columbus  held  this  globe  of  earth  to  be  much  smaller 
than  it  is,  —  to  be  in  fact  of  the  size  which  it  would  have 
been  if  America  and  the  Pacific  Ocean  had  been  left  out  of 
it.  What  he  had  sought  for,  after  fourteen  years  of  impor- 
tunate pleading  for  patronage  from  European  monarchs, 
what  he  supposed  he  had  found,  as  he  lay  upon  his  death- 
bed, was  a  sort  of  back-door  entrance  to  the  Indies.  That 
gorgeous  realm,  —  the  slender  positive  knowledge  of  which 
to  Europeans  was  heightened  by  all  the  inventiveness  of  hu- 
man fancy  and  all  the  glow  and  craving  of  greed,  investing 
it  with  fabulous  charms  and  glitter  as  a  vast  mine  of  gold 
and  gems  awaiting  the  spoiler,  —  had  been  opened  vaguely 
and  invitingly  to  here  and  there  a  land  traveller  and  a  ven- 
turous mariner,  on  its  western  edge.  It  was  a  long  and 
perilous  route  to  it,  either  by  land  or  sea.  Columbus  be- 
lieved that  by  sailing  westward  upon  the  Atlantic  he  could 


NAME   OP  THE   ABORIGINES.  3 

strike  it  upon  its  rear  coast,  on  its  eastern  shore.  That  is 
precisely  what  he  thought  he  had  done,  first  by  touching 
some  of  its  outlying  islands,  then  on  its  main.  And  his 
constant  questions  on  the  spot  were  for  Cathay,  for  the 
realm  of  Prester  John,  the  treasures  of  Indian  mines.  He 
was  looking,  not  for  America,  but  for  India.  And  he  was, 
as  he  believed,  not  in  a  new  world,  but  on  an  edge  of  the 
old  familiar  world.  India  it  was  to  be  all  the  way,  and 
India  it  was  at  the  end.  On  his  fourth  and  last  voyage, 
Columbus  wrote  from  Veragua,  to  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
that  he  was  within  nineteen  days'  land  journey  of  the  Gan- 
ges. And  so  everything  on  his  way  and  at  the  end  of  his 
way  took  a  name  from  the  lure  and  illusion  under  which 
he  won  a  higher  renown  of  glory  than  he  knew.  The 
islands  which  he  first  reached  became,  as  they  are  now, 
the  West  Indies.  The  royal  council  in  Spain  which  man- 
aged, or  rather  mismanaged,  all  that  came  of  the  great 
enterprise,  became  "  The  Council  for  the  Indies ; "  and  the 
aborigines  on  these  superb  domains  of  forests,  mountains, 
lakes,  and  rivers  were  called,  and,  if  ever  they  shall  have 
all  vanished  away,  will  be  known  in  history,  as  "  Indians." 

It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  the  French,  who  so  soon 
after  followed  the  Spaniards  by  voyages  to  the  southern 
and  northern  bounds  on  the  mainland  of  our  domain,  did 
not  adopt  or  use  the  word  "  Indians "  as  a  name  for  the 
aborigines.  I  do  not  recall  a  single  case  of  its  use  by  any 
of  the  French  explorers.  They  uniformly  spoke  and  wrote 
of  the  natives  as  "les  Sauvages,"  —  the  savages.  Occa- 
sionally a  reference  may  be  found  in  which  a  French  writer 
will  use  the  expression,  "  The  Indians,  as  the  English  call 
the  savages." 

Deferring  to  future  discussion  the  leading  topics  which 
this  large  subject  will  present  to  us,  as  we  follow  up  the 
subsequent  relations  between  the  people  of  the  Old  World 
and  those  of  the  New,  we  may  occupy  ourselves  in  these 
introductory  pages  with  a  general  view  of  the  field  before 


4  INTRODUCTORY. 

us.  We  read  with  the  historic  interpretation  of  the  past 
what  nearly  four  centuries  ago  was  veiled  in  the  mystery 
of  the  unknown  and  the  future.  For  what  were  possibili- 
ties then  we  have  now  realities.  The  most  interesting  and 
exciting  questions  now  held  under  discussion  about  our  abo- 
rigines are,  whether  the  race  is  destined  to  absolute  extinc- 
tion, and  whether  irresistible  processes  are  working  to  that 
result.  A  modification  of  the  opinion  that  such  must  needs 
be  the  fate  of  the  red  man  suggests  to  us,  that  the  only  con- 
dition which  will  arrest  that  result  is  such  a  transformation 
of  his  habits,  mode  of  life,  and  even  of  his  nature,  that  those 
who  in  three  or  four  generations  may  represent  the  stock, 
in  pure  or  mixed  descent,  will  have  wholly  parted  with  the 
original  and  distinctive  characteristics  of  the  race.  If  such 
an  extinction  of  an  aboriginal  people  is  to  be  realized,  their 
history  ought  to  be  well  searched  and  attested  before  they 
pass  away. 

Our  knowledge  of  the  natives  of  this  continent  must  be 
taken  strictly  as  beginning  with  the  first  contact  with  them 
by  Columbus  on  the  islands,  and  by  himself  and  his  fol- 
lowers on  the  main.  Of  the  legendary  and  mythological 
Sagas  of  the  alleged  visit  of  the  Northmen  there  is,  as 
has  been  said,  no  contemporaneous  record,  and  no  extant 
monument  or  token.  The  one  hundred  and  twenty  white 
men  who  formed  the  company  of  Columbus  were  the  me- 
dium for  introducing  the  people  of  the  Old  World  to  those 
of  the  New.  Columbus  carried  some  of  the  natives  to  Spain 
on  his  first  return  voyage,  and  in  1508  the  American  savage 
was  seen  for  the  first  time  in  France. 

Those  who  now  represent  the  native  race  on  this  conti- 
nent are  but  little  serviceable  to  the  historian  who  seeks  to 
investigate  its  antecedent  state  and  fortunes.  The  funda- 
mental questions  for  the  archaeologist  are,  whether  man  is 
autochthonic  or  exotic  here,  and  whether  in  ethnic  unity  or 
diversity.  Agassiz  told  us  that  geologically  this  continent 
was  the  first  part  of  the  globe  fitted  for  human  habitation, 


ARCHAEOLOGY  OP  THE  CONTINENT.  5 

and  there  are  scientists  who  claim  that  the  isthmus  was 
the  cradle  of  the  world's  civilization.  But  Sir  John  Lub- 
bock  assures  us  that  there  are  no  physical  or  scientific 
tokens  of  human  existence  on  the  continent  back  of  three 
thousand  years.  Of  course  it  is  not  within  the  limited  and 
appropriate  design  of  these  pages  to  enter  into  the  substance 
and  arguments  of  archseological  science,  as  it  opens  its  rich 
and  profoundly  interesting,  though  bewildering,  discussions 
of  prehistoric  times  and  people  on  this  continent.  A  half 
century  ago  the  mounds  and  other  earthworks  in  the  great 
Western  valleys  engaged  a  curious  interest,  as  tokens  of  the 
presence  of  a  more  advanced  and  intelligent  representation 
of  human  beings  than  were  those  who  were  found  in  occu- 
pancy of  the  soil,  and  who  were  wholly  ignorant  of  the 
builders  or  purpose  of  those  mysterious  works.  But  within 
quite  recent  years  a  far  richer,  yet  still  no  less  baffling  and 
hardly  more  communicative,  field  of  inquiry,  research,  and 
scientific  theorizing  has  been  opened  to  archaeologists,  and, 
strangely  enough,  on  the  mainland  of  the  continent  nearest 
to  the  islands  first  visited  by  the  Spaniards.  The  pyramids 
and  tombs  of  Egypt  have  found  their  rivals  in  the  architec- 
tural remains  of  Palenque,  in  Chiapas,  and  in  all  the  regions 
of  the  Isthmus  and  of  Central  America.  It  is  claimed  that 
these,  and  other  tokens  and  relics  associated  with  them, 
afford  evidences  of  an  ancient  prehistoric  civilization  rival- 
ling that  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  assumption  falls 
as  yet  far  short  of  proof.  In  the  interest  of  historical  and 
archaeological  science,  scholars  are  left  only  to  the  expres- 
sion of  their  murmurs  and  regrets  that  the  first  representa- 
tives of  European  civilization  and  intelligence,  when  opening 
a  new  world  and  an  unknown  stock  of  their  own  race  to 
intercourse  and  inquiry,  should  have  manifested  not  even 
an  ordinary  curiosity  about  those  questions  concerning  the 
American  aborigines  which  modern  inquirers  pursue  with 
Buch  diligence.  Some  of  these  questions,  we  naturally 
infer,  might  have  been  relieved  of  a  part  of  the  mystery  and 


6  INTRODUCTORY. 

obscurity  which  they  have  for  us,  had  they  drawn  attention 
and  investigation  from  the  first  and  most  intelligent  of  the 
Europeans  who  came  into  contact  with  the  natives  of  the 
soil.  But  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  it  would  have 
been  easier  to  ask  questions  than  to  obtain  satisfactory 
answers  to  them.  It  is  utterly  impossible  for  us  now  to 
reach  anything  more  than  proximate  and  conjectural  esti- 
mates of  the  probable  number  of  the  aborigines,  of  their 
distribution  over  the  continent,  the  density  of  the  popula- 
tion in  some  favored  spots,  the  extent  of  wholly  lonely 
and  uninhabited  expanses,  and  the  length  of  time  during 
which  any  one  tribe  or  confederacy  of  tribes  had  occupied 
the  same  regions.  No  satisfactory  information  is  on  record 
of  anything  more  than  the  most  trivial  traditionary  account 
of  the  fortunes  of  any  tribe  among  them  covering  more  than 
two  generations  previous  to  those  then  in  life.  Of  course 
many  of  the  questions  which  we  are  prompted  to  ask  con- 
cerning the  primitive  and  prehistoric  races  on  this  conti- 
nent, as  if  it  were  a  fresh  and  wholly  independent  field  of 
inquiry,  are  problems  equally  for  the  dwellers  on  the  old 
continents  themselves,  with  all  their  histories  and  monu- 
ments. The  theory  of  the  development  or  evolution  of  the 
human  race  from  a  lower  order  of  animal  is  to  be  subjected 
to  the  same  tests,  illustrated  by  the  same  analogies,  and  met 
by  the  same  arresting  difficulties  and  challenges  wherever 
specimens  of  that  race  are  found.  It  is  to  be  observed  also 
that  the  first  white  comers  here  seem  to  have  assumed  what 
has  ever  since  been  substantially  taken  for  granted, —  that, 
though  diversities  of  climate  and  of  natural  features  and 
products  over  the  breadth  and  length  of  the  continent  might 
result  in  differences  of  resource  and  advancement  among 
various  tribes,  all  the  aborigines  were  essentially  homoge- 
neous in  type,  character,  and  condition  of  life. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  seize  and  hold  in  our  minds  the 
gorgeous  dream  of  wealth  and  glory  by  which  this  continent 
was  opened  to  Europeans,  and  improve  it  by  an  added  touch 


ASPECT   OF   THE   NEW  WORLD.  7 

of  fancy  of  our  own.  Suppose  that  this  half  of  the  earth, 
ocean-bounded,  stretching  from  pole  to  pole,  with  all  its 
wealth  of  material,  its  vast  and  mighty  resources,  its  scenes 
and  furnishings  for  the  life,  the  activity,  and  the  happi- 
ness of  man, —  suppose  that,  as  concerned  its  human  in- 
habitants, it  had  proved  to  be  directly  opposite  to  what  it 
was.  Suppose  that  it  had  been  peopled  by  a  superior  race, 
advanced  in  civilization,  refinement,  art,  culture,  science, 
far  at  least,  if  not  immeasurably,  beyond  the  race  whose 
curiosity  and  greed  had  for  the  first  time  bridged  the  way 
between  them.  It  might  have  been  so.  Taking  into  view 
the  general  average  civilization  of  Europe  at  that  time,  we 
know  that  it  was  but  rude  and  rough,  with  many  elements 
of  barbarism,  heavily  burdened  with  ignorance  and  super- 
stition, and  convulsed  year  by  year  by  local  and  extended 
wars.  It  might  well  have  been  that,  folded  within  the 
depths  of  this  continent,  a  people  under  the  training  and 
development  of  centuries,  protected  and  fostered  rather 
than  disadvantaged  by  lack  of  commerce  and  intercourse 
with  other  peoples,  should  have  enjoyed  and  improved  this 
realm  as  we  do  now.  Instead  of  the  hordes  of  wild  and 
naked  savages,  cowering  in  the  forests,  living  by  the  chase, 
burrowing  in  smoky  and  filthy  cabins,  without  arts,  letters^ 
laws,  or  the  signs  or  promise  of  any  advance  in  their  gener- 
ations, there  might  have  been  men  and  women  enjoying 
and  enriched  by  all  that  can  adorn  and  elevate  human  exist- 
ence. And  these,  when  the  ships  of  curious  and  craving 
adventurers  touched  their  shores,  or  strangers  trespassed 
on  their  well  guarded  domains,  might  have  had  the  will 
and  the  knowledge,  the  skill  and  the  enginery  of  battle  and 
defence,  to  repel  the  invaders,  to  sink  them  in  the  sea,  or 
leave  them  to  starvation,  keeping  the  ocean  cordon  inviolate 
around  them.  One  other  element  must  come  into  our  sup- 
position. It  is  that  of  religion.  Whatever  religion  that 
race  imagined  for  this  continent  might  have  had  and  be- 
lieved, however  pure  and  elevating  in  its  influence,  how- 


8  INTRODUCTORY. 

ever  firmly  and  devoutly  held,  so  that  the  proffer  to  change 
it  for  another  would  be  scorned  and  utterly  withstood, —  if 
that  religion  had  not  been  in  name  or  symbol  Christian,  it 
would  at  once  have  decided  what  must  be  the  relations  be- 
tween the  people  and  their  visitors.  As  we  shall  see,  the 
very  axiom  and  conviction  of  right  and  duty  for  all  Euro- 
pean discoverers  of  that  day  was  that  those  of  every  race 
and  clime  who  were  outside  of  the  fold  of  the  Roman 
Church  were  heathen,  uncovenanted  and  damned,  and  must 
come  into  it  or  perish. 

The  fancy  which  I  have  ventured  to  suggest,  —  that  the 
first  European  adventurers  here  might  have  found  a  conti- 
nent and  people  advanced  above  their  own  in  intelligence, 
civilization,  and  all  the  ministering  resources  of  life, — may 
find  a  semblance  approximating  to  reality  in  the  reception 
which  has  been  accorded  to  the  Mongolians  from  China. 
Those  immigrants  have  certainly  found  here  a  land  prefer- 
able for  their  wants  and  uses  above  that  which  they  have 
left.  They  certainly  cannot  congratulate  themselves  on 
the  warmth  of  the  welcome  which  they  have  received.  In- 
terested parties,  those  whose  individual  gains  in  commerce 
or  labor  are  served  by  these  destitute  and  hungry  and  hum- 
ble people,  —  who  thrive  on  stinted  wages  and  refuse  food, — 
have  been  pronounced  public  enemies  for  favoring  the  in- 
coming of  the  Chinese.  Among  those  directly  concerned 
in  the  exciting  question  there  is  a  bitter  controversy  whether 
this  Mongolian  race  shall  make  further  increase  on  our  con- 
tinent, and  whether  those  already  here  shall  not  be  driven 
out.  It  is  easy  by  the  imagination,  helped  by  some  ready 
statistics  and  calculations,  to  forecast  deplorable  conse- 
quences from  such  an  unchecked  immigration.  We  are  told 
that  there  are  more  of  wretched  and  starved  millions  of  pop- 
ulation in  China  to-day  than  there  are  of  all  whites  and  Eu- 
ropeans in  the  United  States,  and  that,  if  the  way  were  left 
open  and  free  for  them  to  come,  with  their  habits  of  industry 
and  thrift  they  would  soon  have  predominance  here.  The 


THE   ILLUSION   OF  THE  DISCOVERERS.  9 

future  must  provide  for  that,  as  for  many  other  serious  prob- 
lems, social  and  political.  We  can  only  comfort  ourselves 
with  the  fact  that  this  continent,  especially  under  Anglo- 
Saxon  sway,  has  shown  a  wonderful  power  of  digestion  and 
assimilation  of  various  peoples  and  nationalities.  We  have 
digested  a  large  part  of  Ireland,  and  a  considerable  portion 
of  Germany,  —  not,  however,  without  some  symptoms  of  a 
social  and  political  dyspepsia.  Dutch,  Swedes,  Scandina- 
vians, French,  Italians,  have  also  furnished  us  with  a  stim- 
ulative and  an  alterative  diet;  and  we  must  leave  to  the 
wisest  councillors  of  our  nation  to  dispose  of  the  Mongo- 
lian element. 

But,  instead  of  finding  in  this  New  World  a  people  in  a 
measure  advanced  in  civilization,  and  capable  of  defensive 
resistance  to  invasion,  those  who  were  the  first  of  Euro- 
peans to  introduce  themselves  to  another  division  of  their 
own  human  race  encountered  only  such  as  we  still  call 
savages,  or,  at  least,  barbarians. 

Even  long  after  the  lands  discovered  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic  were  known  to  form  a  new  continent,  no  longer  a 
part  of  India  or  Asia,  America  was  regarded  as  simply  an 
interposed  barrier  on  the  course  westerly  from  Europe  to 
the  fabled  realm.  Not  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  fol- 
lowing upon  the  first  voyage  of  Columbus  was  this  conti- 
nent sought  or  occupied  solely  for  the  magnificent  ends 
which  it  has  been  realizing  for  nearly  three  centuries.  The 
continent  was  bound  to  open  a  water-course  to  India,  —  a 
new  and  shorter  route  to  its  wealth  and  wonders.  That 
shortened  route,  which  even  to  this  day  we  have  not  given 
over  seeking,  was  then  a  beguiling  and  constraining  lure, 
which  turned  all  considerate  thought  aside  from  the  invit- 
ing shores  and  the  inner  depths  of  this  splendid  realm  for 
toil  and  harvesting.  The  Spaniards  pursued  the  search  for 
that  Indian  highway  near  the  south  of  the  present  bounds 
of  our  nation,  and  in  so  doing  beheld  the  Pacific  Sea,  and 
opened  California  and  Oregon.  French,  English,  and  Dutch 


10  INTRODUCTORY. 

navigators  have  pounded  at  the  barriers  of  Polar  ice  in  the 
vain  attempt  to  pierce  a  passage,  and  have  left  the  names  of 
capes  and  bays  for  their  epitaphs. 

The  Spaniards  might  still  ply  their  cupidity  in  drawing 
out  the  treasures  from  the  mines  of  their  El  Dorado  in 
Mexico  and  Peru,  and  the  efforts  of  the  less  greedy  pioneer 
navigators  from  the  other  nations  of  Europe  might  still  be 
spent  upon  finding  a  northern  route  opened  for  them  to 
India.  But  at  last  the  thrift  and  practical  sagacity,  chiefly 
of  the  English  adventurers,  began  to  rest  upon  the  value 
and  promise  of  this  upper  section  of  the  continent  for  it- 
self alone.  "Why  go  further?  Why  not  stop  here,  and 
see  what  other  forms  of  wealth  and  good  beside  gold  and 
pearls  may  be  found  here?"  These  were  questions  then 
asked  by  those  best  able  to  answer  them.  From  the  mo- 
ment that  the  capabilities  and  the  attractions  of  the  new 
realm  fixed  the  thoughts  and  engaged  the  energies  of  wise 
and  earnest  men,  these  fair  expanses  began  to  open  them- 
selves— as,  by  a  continuous  course  of  adventure  and  explo- 
ration, they  have  been  doing  ever  since — to  the  noblest  uses 
of  man.  Nor  from  the  first  wiser,  yet  hardly  chastened, 
view  taken  of  them  by  those  who  looked  on  them  for 
themselves  alone,  did  they  lack  eyes  and  minds  apprecia- 
tive of  their  grandeur,  their  beauty,  and  their  fascination. 
With  almost  the  sole  exceptions  of  the  Pilgrims  at  Ply- 
mouth, who  first  beheld  their  bleak  and  sandy  land-fall 
under  the  desolation  of  its  wintry  aspect,  the  first  Euro- 
peans who  came  with  a  view  to  stay  in  some  part  of  North 
America,  visitors  or  colonists,  so  timed  their  voyages  as  to 
arrive  at  a  destination  or  to  skirt  the  shores  in  the  beauty 
of  the  opening  spring-time,  the  gay  aspects  of  summer,  or 
the  golden  glory  of  the  autumn.  The  pages  of  their  jour- 
nals gleam  and  glow  with  their  enthusiastic  pictures  of 
the  lovely  aspects  of  Nature  here,  and  the  winning  charms 
which  beckoned  them  on  to  trace  her  from  the  shore 
through  the  river  and  the  lake  up  into  the  recesses  of 


THE  JOY  OF  THE  MARINERS.  11 

meadow,  forest,  and  mountain.  As  we  read  the  quaint 
epithets  and  the  unskilled,  though  wonderfully  expressive, 
terms  and  phrases  —  sometimes  really  gems  of  language 
—  by  which  in  short,  strong  touches  they  present  the  fea- 
tures of  some  new  scene  which  first  of  civilized  men  they 
beheld,  with  all  their  senses  quickened  to  joy,  we  become 
oblivious  of  the  stern  hardships  and  the  ways  of  peril 
through  which  they  had  passed,  and  long  that  we  too  might 
share  in  the  surprises  and  delights  which  they  portray 
to  us.  After  long  and  tempestuous  voyages  so  unlike  those 
by  which  we  pass  like  shuttles  across  the  ocean, — stived 
together  in  cramped  vessels,  seldom  much  exceeding,  often 
not  reaching,  half  a  hundred  tons  burden ;  most  generally 
with  scurvy  and  ship-fever  among  them ;  weary  of  each 
other's  company  and  the  dreary  monotony  of  days  and 
nights,  of  storms  and  calms ;  subsisting  upon  odious  food 
and  stagnant  water,  while  in  vain  craving  something  fresh 
and  green,  —  the  signs  of  bank  and  shoals  and  drifting 
weeds  betokened  the  end  of  their  sea  course.  Their  com- 
pass was  bewildered:  they  had  no  charts.  Then  the  small 
boat  must  be  put  to  service,  with  its  watchful  crew,  to  sound 
the  way  on,  to  search  for  a  passage,  between  reefs  and 
rocks,  with  eyes  ever  open  for  each  whitened  tuft  of  water 
that  crowned  a  breaker.  Meanwhile  they  tell  us  of  the 
fragrant  breathings  that  came  from  the  wooded  and  bushy 
shore,  and  how  they  drank  in  the  odorous  airs  from  sas- 
safras and  piny  groves,  and  how  they  filled  their  water- 
butts  at  fresh  springs,  and  gathered  from  shrub  or  bough 
or  root  the  rich,  green,  juicy  fruit  or  berry  so  racy  in  its 
flavor  to  the  landed  seaman.  And  then  their  pages  fairly 
sparkle  with  tales  of  the  vine-clad  trees,  the  fields  strewed 
with  the  white  blossoms  of  the  strawberry,  the  aroma 
of  the  juices  of  pine  and  fir  and  juniper,  and  all  the 
luxurious  vesture  and  charms  of  a  teeming  virgin  soil. 
Nor  were  they  insensible  to  the  solemnities  of  the  primeval 
forests,  the  depths  of  their  solitudes,  the  sombreness  and 


12  INTRODUCTORY. 

awe  of  their  profound  silence,  broken  only  by  the  water-fall, 
the  rushing  deer,  the  rustling  bough,  the  buzzing  insect,  the 
croaking  frog.  We  shall  soon  read  the  charming  descrip- 
tion which  Columbus  gave  of  the  scene  that  first  opened  on 
the  eyes  of  the  Spaniards.  The  first  adventurers,  landing 
at  the  mouth  of  James  River,  in  the  very  glory  and  gush 
of  summer  beauty  in  1607,  were  in  an  ecstasy  of  exuberant 
delight  at  the  scene,  its  sights  and  odors  for  the  senses. 
The  oysters,  says  George  Percy,  brother  of  the  Duke  of 
Northumberland,  "  lay  on  the  ground  as  thick  as  stones, 
many  with  pearls  in  them ;  the  earth  all  flowing  over 
with  fair  flowers  of  sundry  colors  and  kinds,  as  though  it 
had  been  in  any  garden  or  orchard  in  England ;  the  woods 
full  of  cedar  and  cypress  trees,  which  issue  out  sweet 
gums  like  to  balsam."  And  the  veritable  John  Smith, 
whose  prowess  may  cover  his  whole  posterity  by  name, 
averred  that  "  Heaven  and  earth  never  agreed  better  to 
frame  a  place  for  man's  habitation." 

Governor  Winthrop,  reaching  our  own  rude  coast  in 
June,  1630,  wrote :  "  We  had  so  pleasant  a  sweet  air  as  did 
much  refresh  us ;  and  there  came  a  smell  off  the  shore  like 
the  smell  of  a  garden." 

While  our  domain  is  arraying  itself  in  the  garb  and 
finish  of  civilization,  with  its  cities  and  manufactories, 
there  is  one  of  its  ancient  glories  which  our  near  posterity 
will  never  behold.  It  is  that  of  the  endless  forest  shad- 
owed with  a  deeper  than  a  dim  religious  light,  —  a  sombre 
and  awful  solitude,  silent  in  the  calm,  but  reverberating 
with  ^Eolian  blasts  in  summer  or  winter  tempests. 

What  a  boon  was  offered  to  humanity  in  the  Old  World 
when  the  veil  that  had  hidden  this  New  World  was  pierced 
and  lifted!  Here  was  opened  for  humanity  a  fresh,  fair 
field,  substantially  we  may  say  untried,  untilled,  unpene- 
trated,  and,  as  the  new  comers  chose  to  regard  it,  in  larger 
part  unpeopled.  We  who  live  upon  it  have  not  yet  taken 
the  inventory  of  our  possessions ;  we  know  but  little  more 


THE  BOON  OP  A  NEW  CONTINENT.  18 

than  its  surface,  nor  can  we  cast  the  horoscope  of  its  fu- 
ture. This  we  do  know,  that  while  humanity  was  trying 
its  experiments  with  rising  and  falling  empires  in  the  Old 
World,  exhausting  as  it  seemed  the  zest  and  the  possibili- 
ties of  life,  jaded  and  weary  and  foul,  and  often  sinking  in 
despair,  here  was  a  hidden  realm  of  virgin  earth,  of  for- 
ests, lakes,  rivers,  and  mountains,  of  fields  and  meadows, 
of  mines  and  cataracts,  with  its  secrets  and  marvels  of 
grandeur  and  beauty,  all  glowing  and  beaming  as  with  the 
alluring  legend,  "  Try  once  more  what  you  can  do  with, 
what  you  can  make  of,  human  life  ! "  It  was  as  when 
one  turns  from  a  melancholy  stroll  in  a  decayed  town  or 
ruined  city,  with  its  crumbling  and  mouldering  structures, 
its  sewers  choked  with  foulness,  and  its  festering  graveyards 
whose  inscribed  stones  only  vary  the  tale  of  woe  and  vanity 
and  falsehood,  and  mounts  a  breezy  hill  in  our  fairest  re- 
gions of  yet  lonely  space,  and  gazes  upon  the  prospect. 

Such  was  the  boon  and  gift  offered  to  humanity  on  the 
opening  of  this  continent.  Profoundly  penetrating  and 
solemn  is  the  thought,  that  never  again  on  this  globe  will 
this  transcendent  privilege  and  proffer  be  repeated.  We 
have  got  the  whole,  in  all  its  parts.  Australia  has  discour- 
aged the  hope  which  beamed  at  its  first  welcome.  Though 
it  is  the  largest  island  on  the  globe,  —  itself  a  continent,  — 
having  an  area  of  nearly  three  million  square  miles,  only  the 
skirts  of  its  coasts  appear  to  be  profitable  for  cultivation, 
while  the  surveys  of  its  interior,  so  far  as  they  have  with 
difficulty  been  made,  reveal  enormous  deserts  of  sand  and 
rock.  We  note  that  the  British  men  of  science,  at  the 
annual  meetings  of  their  Association,  offer  their  measure- 
ments of  the  yet  remaining  capacities  of  the  mines  of  coal 
and  iron  and  other  metals,  and  forecast  the  date  when  Eng- 
land must  yield  the  power  and  glory  of  being  the  workshop 
of  the  world.  It  requires  no  abstruse  mathematics  to  deal 
with  the  facts  of  a  larger  and  more  august  problem.  What 
shall  men,  in  the  steady  increase  of  our  race,  do  when  all 


14  INTRODUCTORY. 

the  desirable  stretches  of  the  habitable  earth,  on  continent 
and  island,  are  occupied?  We  know  how  festering  diseases 
and  a  devitalized  blood  track  the  long  abode  of  a  crowd  of 
men  in  one  spot ;  we  know  how  the  life-stock  in  our  cities  is 
renewed  by  new  comers  from  rural  homes.  What  resources 
will  humanity  have  for  its  long  future  refreshment  and  puri- 
fication as  it  uses  up,  exhausts,  and  denies  its  old  scenes  and 
seeks  fresh  fields  and  pastures  new  ?  The  only  meet  answer 
we  can  give  to  that  question  is  in  the  fidelity  and  economy 
with  which  we  use  man's  last  and  largest  continent. 

It  is  not  admitted,  however,  that  men  are  less  vigorous 
in  an  old  country  than  in  a  new  one.  While  we  attribute 
to  the  length  of  their  ages  the  decays  of  some  Eastern 
people,  Germany  has  not  lost  its  power  for  producing  men 
of  noblest  energy  and  talent,  by  any  lapse  of  centuries. 
And  it  has  even  been  affirmed  that  our  race  has  physi- 
cally deteriorated  since  its  transfer  here. 

Notwithstanding  the  mystery  which  overhung  the  conti- 
nent on  its  discovery,  it  was  from  the  first  delighted  in  and 
gloried  over  as  a  land  of  infinite  possibilities.  The  wealth 
and  prosperity  which  have  been  wrought  from  it  may  not 
answer  in  kind  or  form  to  the  f ashionings  of  the  exalted  im- 
aginations of  its  hidden  treasures,  because  there  was  a  halo 
investing  at  first  the  vast  unknown.  It  was  at  once  found 
that  everything  here  was  on  a  magnificent  scale  of  size 
and  grandeur.  What  the  Old  World  from  which  the  ad- 
venturers came  had  only  in  miniature,  in  toy  shapes,  this 
continent  presented  in  sublime  magnitudes.  Its  rivers 
were  bays,  its  ponds  were  seas,  and  its  lakes  were  oceans. 
Where  did  the  continent  begin,  and  where  did  it  end,  and 
how  was  it  to  be  opened  ?  The  early  comers  listened  to 
and  repeated  some  legendary  and  monstrous  stories  of  the 
sort  of  men  which  were  to  be  found  deep  in  these  forests. 
Columbus  saw  mermaids  in  the  sea.  Jacques  Cartier,  in 
Canada,  had  heard  of  men  with  the  convenient  accom- 
plishment of  living  without  a  particle  of  any  kind  of  food ; 


GRANDEUR   AND   STRETCH    OP  TERRITORY.  15 

and  Lafitau  reported  another  sort  of  people  whose  heads,1 
if  they  really  had  any,  were  snugly  buried  between  their 
shoulders,  and  others  still  who  had  but  one  leg. 

This  grand  and  majestic  scale  on  which  the  objects  and 
features  of  the  continent  Avere  proportioned,  gives  a  tone 
of  expanse  and  of  unbounded,  vaguely-defined  locality  in 
the  designation  of  vast  territories.  Such  terms  as  "  the 
head-waters"  of  one  or  more  rivers,  or  their  valleys,  or 
a  "  stretch  "  of  plains,  are  used  as  if  defining  the  range 
for  a  pleasant  walk,  while  months  of  toil  and  risk  would 
be  requisite  for  coursing  them.  One  of  the  charms  which 
will  always  invest  the  perusal  of  the  journals  of  the  old 
explorers,  deep  in  the  recesses  of  the  continent,  will  be 
found  in  noting  these  large  epithets  of  description  and 
locality,  and  in  comparing  them  with  the  reduced  terms, 
the  definite  and  detailed  bounds  and  limits,  by  which  we 
find  it  necessary  to  refer  to  them.  The  Alleghanies  and 
the  Rocky  Mountains  represented  once  uniform  and  com- 
prehensive lines  of  elevation,  longitudinally  continuous  and 
compacted  as  barrier  walls.  They  are  distributed  now  into 
irregular  ranges,  distinguished  by  peaks  and  valleys,  while 
skill  and  fancy  are  tasked  to  give  them  titles. 

The  new  comers,  however,  knowing  well  what  they  came 
for  and  what  they  were  in  search  of,  very  soon  set  upon 
the  prizes  for  which  they  were  seeking.  It  is  curious  to 
mark  how,  from  the  very  first,  different  aims  and  objects, 
respectively  characteristic  of  the  Europeans  of  the  three 
leading  nationalities,  were  manifested  and  pursued  here, 
and  were  followed  down  to  our  own  times.  The  aim  and 
greed  of  the  Spaniard  were  for  gold,  silver,  and  pearls,  the 
spoils  of  the  heathen ;  not  at  all  for  laborious  occupancy  of 


1  This  learned  writer  in  his  "  Moeurs  des  Sauvages  Araericains,"  gives  us 
an  engraved  figure  of  one  of  these  Accphales,  as  he  calls  them.  The  face  and 
head,  comfortably  settled,  as  the  breast,  present  quite  a  benignant  expres- 
sion. The  subject  would  be  an  impracticable  one  for  the  gibbet  or  guillotin^ 
Planche,  iii. 


16  INTRODUCTORY. 

the  soil.  The  Frenchman  was  content  with  the  fur-trade, 
in  pursuit  of  which  he  needed  the  aid  of  the  Indian,  whom 
he  was  disposed  therefore  to  treat  with  friendliness,  and 
with  whom  he  consorted  on  such  equal  terms  as  to  be  still 
represented,  all  over  our  north  and  west,  by  a  race  of  half- 
breeds.  The  staple  of  the  English  stock,  after  some  random 
ventures  in  Virginia,  when  they  came  to  be  represented  by 
the  Puritan  element  in  Plymouth,  Massachusetts,  and  Con- 
necticut, though  they  had  fallen  upon  the  least  kindly  and 
the  most  rugged  soil  of  the  continent,  accepted  the  condition 
of  hard  work  and  frugal  ways,  earning  their  living  by  cod- 
fish and  corn.  And  that  may  be  the  reason  why — the 
Spaniards  having  vanished  with  the  age  of  gold,  and  the 
French  with  the  wasteful  fur-trade — the  English,  though 
the  last  comers,  are  the  hard  workers  and  the  opulent  on 
thjs  land. 

'  The  red  men  will  always  have  a  tender,  touching  claim 
upon  our  sympathetic  regrets  in  the  fact  that  we  succeed  to 
their  heritage.  We  fill  the  places  from  which  they  have 
vanished.  The  more  enduring,  the  unchangeable  features 
of  the  scenes  of  our  life-time  —  the  mountain,  the  valley, 
the  river — are  those  which  are  forever  identified  with  them. 
The  changes  and  improvements  which  we  have  introduced 
are  wholly  ours,  and  would  be  simply  indifferent  or  offensive 
to  the  wild  forest  rovers.  However  we  may  palliate  or  jus- 
tify, with  reasons  or  from  the  stress  of  necessity,  their  re- 
moval from  before  us,  we  cannot  forget  that  they  were  once 
here ;  and  that  whatever  was  the  sum  or  substance  of  the 
good  of  existence  for  them  was  found  in  the  same  aspects 
of  Nature,  under  the  same  sun  and  moon  and  stars,  on  the 
same  soil,  as  the  same  seasons  passed  over  it,  where  we 
find  our  own.  An  ancient  burial-ground,  with  its  decaying 
memorials,  does  not  lose  the  pathos  of  its  suggestiveness  for 
us  in  the  reflection  that  the  covered  human  dust  is  very 
ancient,  and  was  of  necessity  deposited  there. 

There  are  occasions  and  places  when  the  regretful  re- 


MEMORY   OF   VANISHED   TRIBES.  17 

membrances  of  a  vanished  race  come  upon  us  with  a  depth 
of  sympathy  so  true  that  we  love  to  yield  to  it.  When, 
under  the  fairer  auspices  of  Nature,  in  our  vacation  or  holi- 
day moods,  we  visit  spots  in  harmony  with  our  ideals  of 
the  romance  of  savage  life,  we  are  easily  beguiled  into 
workings  of  remorse  or  pity  for  the  wasted  and  extinct 
tribes  who  once  roamed  here  before  us.  On  the  mountain 
slopes,  with  their  deep,  wild  coverts,  never  yet  disturbed  by 
the  woodman's  axe,  and  where  wild  creatures  still  linger  in 
their  haunts,  we  feel  that  a  few  of  the  native  stock  might 
still  find  a  refuge.  In  the  shaded  valleys,  coursed  by  bab- 
bling brooks  or  rushing  rivulets,  on  the  green  and  pebbly 
shores  of  tranquil  lakes,  into  which  push  out  the  sedgy  and 
wooded  tongues  of  land,  circled  with  creeping  vines  and 
the  mild  fragrance  of  the  wild-flowers,  —  we  should  meet 
without  surprise  the  dusky  loiterers  whose  moccasoned  feet 
might  tread  noiselessly  before  us.  By  the  summer  sea- 
side, on  beach  or  cliff,  where  we  pitch  the  canvas  tent,  in 
mimicry  of  the  native  wigwam,  we  may  share  in  fancy  the 
company  of  those  to  whom  the  scene  on  earth  was  the  same 
three  hundred  years  ago  as  it  is  to  us  to-day.  Then,  if  ever, 
we  are  responsive  to  the  feelings  of  compunction  over  the 
wrongs  of  the  red  men.  We  call  them  back  as  to  their 
own  outraged  and  stolen  heritage.  We  reknit  their  un- 
tutored hearts  to  the  scenes  and  objects  which  we  feel 
they  must  have  intensely  enjoyed  and  loved,  because  they 
shared  the  human  sensibilities  which  give  to  the  sunlight 
and  the  breeze,  to  the  lapping  sea-wave  and  the  aroma  of 
the  forest,  their  entrancing  spell  for  us.  The  wealth  of  sen- 
timent in  them,  unrefined  and  untutored  as  it  was,  was  of 
the  endowment  of  their  nature.  "Kit  must  all  have  gone  in 
concentrated,  appreciative  strength,  to  spend  itself  within 
the  narrow  range  of  their  emotional  being.  Among  the 
more  engaging  subjects  of  interest  and  curiosity  which 
within  quite  recent  years  have  been  discussed  by  our  more 
philosophic  students,  and  which  we  shall  have  to  note  fur- 

2 


18  INTRODUCTORY. 

tlier  on,  is  the  inquiry  as  to  the  range  and  degree  of  what 
we  call  mental  development  among  savages  generally,  or  in 
any  particular  portion  of  them  favored  by  condition  and  op- 
portunity. On  the  whole  it  may  be  said  that  fuller  obser- 
vation, closer  intercourse,  and  a  keener  study  of  them  have 
greatly  qualified  the  first  impressions  and  the  first  judg- 
ments of  them  as  wholly  imbruted,  stolid,  vacant  in  mind, 
inert,  without  food  and  exercise  of  thought.  The  very 
closeness  of  their  relation  to  Nature,  its  aspects  and  pro- 
ducts, and  the  acuteness  of  their  powers  of  observation, 
must  have  quickened  them  into  simple  philosophers. 

It  is  on  record,  and  there  it  must  remain,  that  to  the  first 
comers  from  Europe,  at  every  point  of  our  mainland  and 
islands,  the  natives  extended  a  kindly  and  gentle  welcome. 
They  offered  freely  the  hospitality  of  the  woods.  Yet 
more :  they  looked  on  the  whites  with  timid  reverence  and 
awe  as  superior  beings,  coming  not  so  much  from  another 
region  of  this  same  earth  as  from  some  higher  realm.  It 
is  to  be  confessed,  moreover,  that  their  visitors  very  soon 
broke  the  spell  of  their  enchantment,  and  proved  themselves 
human,  with  charms  and  potencies  for  working  harm  and 
woe.  The  white  men  cheaply  parted  with  the  marvel  and 
glory  with  which  the  simple  natives  invested  them,  and  be- 
came the  objects  of  a  dread  which  was  simply  horror.  Re- 
lations of  hostility  and  rancor  were  at  once  established,  in  a 
superlative  degree,  by  the  Spaniards,  in  their  ruthless  raids 
upon  the  natives,  to  whom  they  made  the  basest  returns  for 
an  overflow  of  kindness,  whom  they  tasked  and  transported 
as  slaves,  and  on  whom  they  visited  all  the  contempt  of 
their  own  superstition  and  all  the  ingenuities  of  torture. 
The  expresses  and  the  telegraphs  of  the  children  of  the 
woods  transmitted  through  the  continent,  as  effectively  as 
do  our  modern  devices,  the  mingled  impressions  of  bewilder- 
ment and  rage,  and  opened  the  since  unvaried  and  inten- 
sified distrust  which  the  red  man  has  of  the  white  man. 

We  are  often,  sometimes  very  solemnly,  forewarned  of 


THE  INDIAN  NEMESIS.  19 

the  judgment  which  later  times  and  loftier  standards  of 
right  than  our  own  will  pronounce  upon  our  country  for 
our  treatment  of  the  Indians.  Occasionally,  with  prophetic 
burden,  the  stern  seer  into  the  future  denounces  a  curse 
forever  to  rest  upon  this  land,  evoked  by  the  silent,  spectral 
forms  of  the  vanished  red  men  over  whose  hunting-grounds 
and  graves  in  the  hands  of  the  spoiler  no  permanent  bless- 
ing can  ever  be  enjoyed.  But,  through  any  and  all  future 
time,  —  when,  if  it  should  be  so,  the  red  race  has  vanished, 
—  two  very  different  pleas  in  relief  or  vindication  of  the 
white  man  will  be  offered.  We  can  anticipate  those  pleas, 
for  they  can  be  no  other  than  are  spoken  earnestly  and  ur- 
gently in  our  own  present  time.  One  of  them  will  urge, 
as  it  now  urges,  inevitable  fate,  irresistible  destiny,  as  ap- 
pointing absolute  extermination  and  extinction  for  a  race  of 
men  either  incapable  of,  or  wilfully  hostile  to,  civilization. 
The  other  plea  of  defence  will  rest  in  firmly  and  eloquently 
insisting  that  the  wisdom  and  conscience  of  the  white  man 
were  thwarted,  by  circumstance  or  inherent  obstacles,  in 
all  the  humane  and  earnest  and  costly  work  which  he  at- 
tempted for  the  good  of  the  red  nian. 

In  the  broad  sweep  of  historic  retrospect,  that  has  indeed 
been  a  direful  and  tragic  work  as  regards  the  red  man  and 
the  white  man  which  has  been  wrought  on  this  continent ; 
sad  and  shocking  it  is,  whether  we  contemplate  it  in  the  in- 
terests of  a  humane  civilization,  or  in  sympathy  with  the 
Indian.  But  with  no  intent  to  prejudice  the  whole  issue, 
to  plead  for  wrong,  or  to  palliate  iniquity,  there  are  two 
stern  facts  of  which  we  may  remind  ourselves.  First: 
during  the  more  than  three  centuries  of  struggle  between 
Christian  and  heathen  races  on  this  continent,  every  wrong 
and  outrage  to  humanity,  all  the  woe  and  suffering  involved 
in  it,  have  been  more  than  matched  in  the  methods  by  which 
so-called  Christians  have  dealt  with  each  other  in  the  Old 
World,  by  wars,  massacres,  persecutions,  and  all  the  en- 
ginery of  passion  and  folly,  and  hate  and  vengeance.  And, 


20  INTRODUCTORY. 

second :  if  all  the  losses  and  inflictions  —  in  pain,  in  actual 
visitations  of  every  sort  of  distress  and  agony  —  could  be 
summed  up  and  brought  into  comparison,  it  would  be  found 
that  the  cost  of  getting  possession  of  this  continent  has 
been  and  will  yet  be  to  the  whites  more  exacting  in  toil 
and  blood  and  in  purchase-price  than  the  defence  of  their 
heritage  has  been  to  the  Indians.  Sad  and  harrowing  as 
has  been  the  sanguinary  conflict  between  a  civilized  and  a 
barbarous  race  on  this  continent,  how  trivial  has  been  the 
sum  of  its  woes  compared  with  those  of  contemporaneous 
passions  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean,  in  religious,  civil, 
and  dynastic  wars,  —  wars  of  succession,  seven  years'  wars, 
thirty  years'  wars,  wars  of  the  Netherlands,  of  the  Fronde, 
of  the  League,  of  the  Peninsula,  of  the  Napoleons,  of  the 
Holy  Alliance,  of  every  European  nation,  —  all  Christian ! 

Yet  if  full  vengeance  settles  the  account  of  the  wronged, 
vastly  more  in  number  of  the  whites  than  of  the  Indians, 
and  by  sterner  and  ghastlier  methods  of  death,  have  fallen 
in  the  conflict.  Nor  has  Christian  civilization,  in  its  re- 
straints upon  the  exercise  of  arbitrary  and  vengeful  power 
by  the  strong  against  the  weak,  withstood,  down  to  our  own 
times,  the  grossest  acts  of  oppression  and  outrage  when  na- 
tional or  commercial  aggrandizement  or  thrift  was  the  ob- 
ject in  view.  When  all  the  naval  and  military  power  and 
policy  of  Great  Britain  have  been  engaged  to  thrust  opium 
down  the  throats  of  the  Chinese  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet, 
and  Sepoys  have  been  blown  from  the  mouth  of  cannon, 
we  cannot  deal  with  like  enormities  as  stains  upon  merely 
the  annals  of  the  past. 

The  relations  between  the  red  and  the  white  men  on  this 
continent,  from  their  very  first  contact  to  this  present  year, 
may  be  traced  historically  in  two  parallel  lines,  reproducing, 
repeating,  and  illustrating  in  a  long  series  the  same  facts 
which  characterize  each  of  them.  First,  we  have  in  a  con- 
tinuous line  a  long  series  of  avowed  intentions,  of  sincere 
purposes,  and  of  earnest,  often  heroic,  designs,  plans,  and 


THE  CONFLICT  OP  BENEFITS  AND   WRONGS.  21 

efforts  to  protect  and  benefit  the  savage ;  to  secure  his 
rights,  to  advance  his  welfare,  to  humanize,  civilize,  and 
Christianize  him.  Second,  we  have,  in  another  unbroken 
but  always  steady  series,  a  course  of  oppressive  and  cruel 
acts,  of  hostile  encounters,  of  outrages,  wars,  and  treacher- 
ous dealings,  which  have  driven  the  savage  from  his  succes- 
sive .refuges  on  plain  Or  mountain  fastness,  in  forests  or  on 
lake  shores,  till  it  would  seem  as  if  this  unintermitted  har- 
assment must  make  certain  his  ultimate  extinction. 

How  this  second  course  and  series  of  oppressive,  cruel, 
and  exterminating  measures  got  prevalence  and  sway,  and 
has  effectually  triumphed  over  the  really  sincere  purposes 
and  professions,  over  the  earnest  and  costly  efforts  made  to 
protect  and  benefit  the  savage,  it  is  the  office  of  a  faithful 
and  candid  historian  to  explain. 

Of  course,  it  is  of  all  things  the  most  requisite  that  one 
should  start  on  this  inquiry  in  a  spirit  of  perfect  impar- 
tiality. Yet  no  one  can  pursue  it  far  without  yielding  much 
or  little  to  a  bias  that  has  prejudiced  the  inquiry  for  most 
who  have  engaged  in  it,  and  will  be  sure  to  present  itself 
to  all.  That  bias  is  the  accepting  what  is  called  the  in- 
evitable, in  the  form  of  a  theory  about  races,  which  assumes 
or  argues  the  utter  impossibility  that  two  races  of  men  can 
exist  in  harmony  and  prosperity  together.  It  is  enough  to 
say  that  this  theory  is  in  no  case  to  be  assumed,  but  must 
be  tested  and  verified  on  each  occasion  that  suggests  it. 

As  to  these  two  parallel  lines  of  facts  which  illustrate  the 
relations  between  the  red  and  the  white  man  here,  it  may 
be  observed  that  there  is  in  our  libraries  and  public  archives 
a  most  voluminous  collection  of  books  and  documents  in 
which  they  are  followed  out.  We  have  unnumbered  jour- 
nals and  narratives,  relations  of  individuals  who,  antici- 
pating or  sharing  in  each  successive  advance  of  frontier  life, 
have  written  for  us  Indian  chronicles.  We  have  tales  of 
adventure,  stories  of  captives,  reports  of  heroic  missiona- 
ries, records  of  benevolent  societies,  and  Government  docu- 


22  INTRODUCTORY. 

ments, —  indeed,  a  perfect  mass  of  partial  and  impartial 
guides. 

It  is  but  just  that  an  adequate  and  emphatic  statement 
should  be  made  of  the  avowedly  good  intentions  and  pur- 
poses, and  of  the  really  earnest  and  costly  schemes  and  ef- 
forts of  the  whites  for  the  benefit  of  the  aborigines  from  the 
very  first  intercourse  between  them.  True,  the  insufficiency 
and  failure  of  nearly  all  of  these  purposes  and  efforts,  and 
the  almost  mocking  futility  of  them  when  compared  with 
the  steady,  grasping,  and  well-nigh  exterminating  progress 
of  the  whites  over  the  continent,  may  seem  to  throw  back 
upon  these  measures  a  character  of  insincerity  and  unre- 
ality. But  it  would  be  untrue,  as  well  as  unfair  and  un- 
charitable, so  to  judge.  There  were  profound  integrity, 
rectitude,  and  strong  resolve  in  many  of  the  professions 
of  commiseration  and  intended  right  dealing  towards  the 
Indians.  Benevolent  and  manly  hearts  have  beat  in  tender 
sympathy  for  them.  Benevolence,  in  its  single  rills  and  in 
the  generous  flow  of  its  gathered  contributions,  has  poured 
forth  its  kindly  offices  to  them,  and  the  sternly  consecrated 
lives  of  patient  and  heroic  men,  roughened  and  perilled 
by  all  the  dismal  exigencies  of  the  work,  have  been  spent 
with  the  savages  and  for  the  savages,  to  secure  for  them 
the  rights  of  humanity  and  the  blessings  of  civilization  and 
pure  religion. 

We  may  regard  as  mere  empty  forms  the  conditions  and 
commands,  looking  towards  the  interests  of  the  natives,  in- 
troduced into  the  patents  or  charters  with  which  the  colo- 
nists from  Europe  were  empowered  to  take  possession  of  the 
country.  We  may  ridicule  the  commissions  and  instruc- 
tions given  to  governors  and  magistrates  as  to  the  treatment 
of  the  Indians,  of  which  so  little  came  in  practice.  The  la- 
bors of  philanthropists,  humanitarians,  and  missionaries  in 
their  single  efforts,  or  in  their  associated  benevolent  organ- 
izations, drawing  bounties  from  all  Christendom  to  benefit 
the  savages,  may  sink  into  insignificance  when  compared 


ISABELLA   PLEADS   FOR   THE   SAVAGES.  23 

with  the  cunning,  the  greed,  the  violence,  the  ruthless  and 
unpitying  vengeance,  and  the  steady  havoc  of  war  which 
have  made  the  red  men  yield  all  but  their  last  refuges,  on  an 
almost  boundless  continent,  to  the  white  man.  vBut  none 
the  less  are  there  witnesses,  memorials,  and  full  confirma- 
tions of  the  fact  that  the  Indian  has  had  his  friends  and 
benefactors  among  the  whites.  Always,  and  with  bright 
and  gracious  tributes  for  sincerity  and  gentle  humanity, 
must  the  name  of  Isabella  of  Castile  be  reverently  honored, 
because,  while  her  own  royal  consort,  her  nobles,  her  people, 
and  even  many  of  her  highest  ecclesiastics,  indifferent  to 
the  subject, —  either  from  thoughtlessness  over  the  first 
signs  of  a  stupendous  iniquity  that  was  to  follow,  or  from 
absorption  in  prospective  ambitions  or  commercial  inter- 
ests,—  connived  from  the  first  in  the  enslavement,  oppres- 
sion, and  destruction  of  the  natives  of  the  New  World,  she 
was  the  first  of  women  or  of  men  to  protest,  as  a  Chris- 
tian, against  any  spoiling  of  the  heathen.  Nor  was  it  from 
a  mere  feminine  tenderness  that  she  pleaded  and  wrote  with 
such  constraining  earnestness  that  the  children  of  Nature, 
as  we  shall  soon  read,  described  so  engagingly  by  Columbus, 
should  be  treated  with  all  the  more  of  Christian  love  and 
mercy  because,  not  being  Christians,  this  was  the  only  way  to 
make  them  Christians.  Of  all  European  sovereigns,  Isabella 
alone  wrought  from  the  dictation  of  the  heart,  and  not  with 
merely  mocking  formalities  of  profession  in  behalf  of  the 
savages.  To  the  close  of  her  life,  in  deep  afflictions  and 
in  bodily  sufferings,  and  in  dictating  her  last  wishes 
and  commands,  that  saintly  queen  pleaded  for  gentle  pity 
and  for  Christian  equity  and  love  in  behalf  of  her  subjects 
of  a  strange  race.  One  of  her  ecclesiastics  caught  her 
spirit ;  others  of  them  gave  their  counsel  for  measures 
which  thwarted  her  purposes. 

The  President  and  Council  of  the  Virginia  Plantation 
in  1606  were  instructed  "to  kindly  treat  the  savages 
and  heathen  people  in  those  parts,  and  use  all  proper 


24  INTRODUCTORY. 

means  to  draw  them  to  the  true  service  and  knowledge  of 
God." 

In  the  patent  for  Nova  Scotia,  in  1621,  James  I.  speaks 
of  the  countries  "  either  inhabited  or  occupied  by  unbe- 
lievers, whom  to  convert  to  the  Christian  faith  is  a  duty  of 
great  importance  to  the  glory  of  God." 

In  the  charter  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  1628,  the  colo- 
nists are  warned  to  lead  such  good  lives  as  "  may  win  and 
invite  the  natives  of  the  country  to  the  knowledge  and 
obedience  of  the  only  true  God  and  Saviour  of  mankind, 
and  the  Christian  faith, — which  in  our  royal  intention  and 
the  adventurers'  free  profession  is  the  principal  end  of  this 
Plantation." 

In  full  accord  with  this  royal  form  of  instruction  the 
Governor  (Cradock)  of  the  Bay  Company,  in  1629,  writes 
to  Endicott,  its  first  resident  officer  here :  "  We  trust  you 
will  not  be  unmindful  of  the  main  end  of  our  Plantation, 
by  endeavoring  to  bring  the  Indians  to  the  knowledge  of 
the  Gospel ;  which,  that  it  may  be  the  speedier  and  better 
effected,  the  earnest  desire  of  our  whole  Company  is,  that 
you  have  a  diligent  and  watchful  eye  over  our  own  people, 
that  they  live  unblamable  and  without  reproof,  and  demean 
themselves  justly  and  courteous  towards  the  Indians,  there- 
by to  draw  them  to  affect  our  persons  and  consequently  our 
religion, — as  also  to  endeavor  to  get  some  of  their  children 
to  train  up  to  reading  and  consequently  to  religion,  whilst 
they  are  young :  herein  to  young  or  old  to  omit  no  good  op- 
portunity that  may  tend  to  bring  them  out  of  that  woful 
state  and  condition  they  now  are  in, — in  which  case  our  pre- 
decessors in  this  our  land  sometimes  were,  and,  but  for  the 
mercy  and  goodness  of  our  God,  might  have  continued  to 
this  day."  Endicott  was  further  instructed  :  "  If  any  of  the 
salvages  pretend  right  of  inheritance  to  all  or  any  part  of 
the  lands  granted  in  our  patent,  endeavor  to  purchase  their 
tytle,  that  we  may  avoid  the  least  scruple  of  intrusion." 

In  the  charter  given  by  Charles  II.,  in  1681,  to  William 


COLLEGES  DESIGNED   FOR  THE  NATIVES.  25 

Penn,  we  read  of  the  "  commendable  desire  to  reduce  the 
savage  natives  by  gentle  and  just  manners  to  the  love  of 
civil  society  and  the  Christian  religion." 

It  is  observable,  however,  that  in  these  and  many  other 
similar  royal  and  public  avowals  and  instructions  as  to 
the  righful  claims  of  the  natives  upon  the  colonists,  but 
little  is  said  about  remunerating  the  Indians  or  purchasing 
from  them  any  territorial  rights.  It  was  always  com- 
placently assumed  that  the  whites  might  quietly  take  pos- 
session. Whatever  then  was  the  intent  or  the  degree  of 
sincerity  of  these  royal  instructions,  they  all  rested  upon 
the  assumption  that  the  invaders  might  rightfully  override, 
by  a  claim  of  superiority,  the  tenure  of  barbarians  on  the 
soil. 

It  is  noteworthy  also,  that,  from  the  very  earliest  settle- 
ment of  the  English  colonists,  the  intent  and  effort  to 
benefit  the  natives  took  the  ambitious  form  of  providing 
for  them  schools  and  even  colleges,  in  which  they  should 
enjoy  the  highest  advantages  of  education  with  the  whites. 
While  the  issue  was  as  yet  uncertain,  whether  the  English 
would  maintain  their  hold  as  planters  in  Virginia,  Sir 
Edwin  Sandys,  as  treasurer  of  the  Company,  proposed, 
in  1619,  to  found  a  college  in  the  colony  for  English  and 
Indian  youth  in  common.  He  received  an  anonymous  gift 
of  ,£500  for  the  education  of  Indian  youth  in  English  and 
in  the  Christian  religion.  Other  gifts  were  added,  and  the 
prospect  seemed  promising  and  hopeful.  By  advice  of  the 
King  and  the  Bishops  XI, 500  were  collected  in  England. 
The  Company  appropriated  for  the  purpose  ten  thousand 
acres  of  land  at  Henrico,  near  Richmond.  But  the  mas- 
sacre of  the  whites  by  the  Indians,  in  1622,  soon  after 
a  beginning  had  been  made  in  the  work,  effectually  an- 
nulled it. 

The  first  brick  building  on  the  grounds  of  Harvard  bore 
the  name  of  the  Indian  College.  It  was  built  by  funds 
gathered  in  England.  Its  design  was  to  furnish  rooms 


26  INTRODUCTORY. 

for  twenty  Indian  youth,  who,  on  a  level  with  the  English, 
might  pursue  a  complete  academic  course,  for  which  they 
should  be  prepared  by  a  "  Dame's  school,"  and  by  "  Master 
Corlet's  Grammar  School."  The  attempt  was  earnestly 
made  and  carried  through  its  various  stages,  with  but 
slender  and  wholly  unsatisfactory  results.  That  work  of 
marvellous  toil  and  holy  zeal,  Eliot's  Indian  Bible,  was 
printed  in  that  consecrated  college  hall.  The  excellent 
Robert  Boyle  and  the  beloved  and  gentle  Bishop  Berkeley 
both  bore  labors  and  sacrifices  in  planning  colleges  for  the 
Indians,  — alike  in  vain. 

Dartmouth  College  took  its  start  as  "  Moors'  Charity 
School  for  Indians,"  for  the  education  of  their  youth  and 
of  missionaries  to  them.  The  motto  on  the  college  seal 
is  Vox  clamantis  in  Deserto.  A  very  remarkable  list  is 
still  preserved  of  subscriptions  made  in  its  behalf  from 
two  hundred  places  in  Great  Britain,  chiefly  gathered  by 
the  preaching  there  of  an  ordained  Christian  minister, 
Sampson  Occum,  an  Indian.  President  Wheelock  gave 
his  devoted  labors  to  the  school  and  college,  and  once  had 
twenty-one  Indian  boys  under  instruction.  But  the  mis- 
sionaries sent  forth  from  the  college  were  not  welcome  or 
successful,  and  the  whites  soon  monopolized  the  advantages 
of  the  institution.  In  each  of  these  enterprises  some  ma- 
lign agency  came  in  to  thwart  all  well-intended  purposes. 

In  view  of  all  these  royal  covenants  and  solemn  avowals 
made  in  the  interest  of  the  red  men,  and  of  all  these  asso- 
ciated and  individual  efforts  through  costly  outlays  and 
devoted  sacrifice  to  serve  and  help  and  save  them,  no  one 
can  fairly  affirm  that  the  European  colonists  from  the  be- 
ginning until  now  have  failed  to  recognize  the  ordinary 
claims  of  a  common  humanity  which  the  aborigines  had 
upon  them.  We  certainly  have  to  take  note  of  the  fact 
that  the  best  feelings  and  purposes  towards  the  Indians 
were  cherished  in  anticipation  of  what  would  and  ought  to 
be  the  relations  of  the  whites  as  Christians,  when  brought 


THE   CHILDREN   OP  NATURE.  27 

into  intercourse  with  them.  Closer  acquaintanceship,  inti- 
macy of  intercourse,  and  indeed  the  results  of  the  first 
friendly  and  helpful  efforts  of  the  whites,  soon  raised  and 
strengthened  a  feeling  of  discouragement,  which  was  very 
ready  to  justify  itself  when  alienation  and  open  hostility 
embittered  the  relations  of  the  races.  The  conviction  that 
it  was  very  difficult  to  convert  and  civilize  an  Indian  received 
from  most  of  those  who  listened  to  its  avowal  the  response 
that  the  labor  was  by  no  means  compensated  by  the  result. 
In  other  words,  the  strong  persuasion  was  that  the  Indian 
was  not  worth  converting.  This  was  so  manifestly  allowed 
in  the  case  of  reprobates  among  the  whites,  as  to  sound  like 
an  axiom  when  said  of  the  red  men. 

"  Men  without  knowledge  of  God  or  use  of  reason,"  is 
the  royal  description  given  of  the  Indians  by  Francis,  in  his 
commission  to  Roberval.  The  monarch  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  aware  of  the  hopelessness  of  any  effort  to  deal 
with  those  who  in  seeming  only  were  men,  while  they  lacked 
the  endowment  which  distinguishes  man  from  the  brute. 
He  might,  however,  have  qualified  his  description  of  the  In- 
dian by  affirming  that  it  was  the  use,  not  the  possession  or 
the  capacity,  of  reason  which  was  wanting.  Had  he  known 
some  of  those  whom  he  thus  described ;  had  he  been  left  to 
their  guidance  in  the  lakes  and  streams,  the  thickets  and 
coverts  of  the  wilderness,  and  noted  their  fertility  of  re- 
source, their  ingenuity  in  emergencies,  and  the  skill  with 
which  they  interpreted  Nature, —  he  would  have  found  at 
least  that  they  had  compensating  faculties  as  well  adapted 
to  the  conditions  of  their  life  as  are  the  trained  intellectual 
exercises  of  the  masses  of  ordinary  men.  That  monarch 
and  his  successors  were  well  represented  among  the  natives 
by  those,  whether  priests  or  adventurers  and  traders,  to 
whom  we  owe  the  best  knowledge  of  the  aborigines,  in  the 
early  years  of  intercourse.  The  lack  of  reason,  or  even  of 
its  use,  was  not  the  special  defect  of  an  Indian  in  the  view 
of  a  Frenchman. 


28  INTRODUCTORY. 

The  fruitful  subject  of  Christian  missions  to  the  Indians, 
both  Roman  Catholic  and  Protestant,  will  be  treated  by 
itself.  But  brief  reference  must  be  made  to  the  long,  and 
up  to  this  day  continuous,  series  of  efforts,  beginning  with 
the  first  European  occupancy  here,  through  incorporated  and 
associated  benevolent  societies  and  fellowships ;  through 
consecrated  bequests  of  funds ;  through  public  and  private 
appeals  generously  answered ;  and  through  the  heroic  and 
self-sacrificing  labors  and  sufferings  of  individuals  who  have 
shrunk  from  no  extremities  of  pain  and  trial, —  all  given  to 
civilize  and  Christianize  the  aborigines  of  this  soil  and  their 
representatives.  The  advocates  in  our  days  of  the  peace 
policy  with  the  Indians  may  trace  their  line  of  descent 
through  an  honorable  roll  of  predecessors.  There  are  funds 
sacredly  kept,  the  income  of  which  is  now,  year  by  year,  dis- 
tributed by  the  terms  of  old  charters  and  trusts,  for  the  sec- 
ular and  religious  welfare  of  the  Indians.  Nor  is  it  strictly 
true,  as  has  often  been  said,  that  the  Indians  have  no  stand- 
ing in  our  courts.  Though  the  standing  which  they  have 
may  be  hardly  distinguishable  from  that  of  wards,  idiots, 
lunatics,  and  paupers,  it  has  at  least  secured  to  them  many 
individual  and  common  rights,  with  penalties  on  such  as 
wrong  them.  There  are  regions  now  in  some  of  our  oldest 
States  which  were  set  apart  for  Indian  ownership  and  resi- 
dence in  Colonial  and  Provincial  times,  with  trust  funds  for 
their  maintenance,  independent  of  those  which  have  been 
established  by  the  national  Government.  Representatives 
of  the  race  are  still  found  in  those  places.  To  what  experi- 
ences and  results  these  few  remnants  of  the  aborigines  on 
these  spots  have  been  brought,  must  be  noticed  further  on 
in  these  pages. 

In  the  minds  of  some  among  us,  who  most  regret  and 
condemn  the  general  dealing  of  our  people  and  Government 
with  the  Indians,  there  floats  an  ideal  conception  of  what 
might  have  been,  and  what  should  have  been,  the  relations 
between  the  two  races  from  the  first  up  to  this  day,— rela- 


THE   INDIANS   AND   EUROPEANS   AS   FRIENDS.  29 

tions  which  would  have  withstood  a  giant  injustice,  and 
forbade  countless  atrocities,  massacres,  and  wars.  This  con- 
ception, in  the  interest  of  right  and  reason  and  humanity, 
suggests  that  the  stock  and  lineage  of  the  original  red  men, 
with  those  of  the  colonizing  white  men,  might  easily  have 
begun  an  amicable  and  helpful  coexistence  on  this  conti- 
nent, and  shared  the  heritage ;  and  that  they  might,  accord- 
ing to  circumstances  or  their  own  wills,  have  become  amal- 
gamated, or  kept  themselves  distinct.  And  the  relations 
between  the  English  residents  and  the  natives  in  their  East 
Indian  dependencies  are  pointed  to  as  affording  some  sort 
of  a  parallel. 

By  that  facile  method  by  which  we  often  shape  conditions 
which,  as  we  assume,  might  have  been  and  ought  to  have 
been  realized,  while  we  leave  out  of  view  the  needful  means 
for  effecting  them  and  the  obstacles  which  interposed,  we 
are  apt  to  argue  the  case  presented  somewhat  as  follows : 
There  was,  and  is,  on  this  continent  room  enough  for  both 
races.  The  new  comers  were  forlorn  strangers, — guests. 
The  aborigines  were  kindly  hosts  to  these  poor  wayfarers. 
They  might  have  lived  peacefully  together  and  prospered, 
the  stronger  party  always  keeping  the  grateful  memory  of 
early  obligations.  Left  to  their  natural  ways  and  develop- 
ment, the  whites  might  have  occupied  the  seaboard  and  the 
factory  streams,  gradually  extending  into  the  interior ;  the 
red  men  might  have  hid  within  the  forest  recesses,  to  con- 
serve any  of  the  good  qualities  of  their  race,  without  con- 
tamination, and  gradually  with  the  adoption  of  improving 
influences  from  the  whites.  Then  all  would  have  been 
fair  to-day  between  the  races.  We  might  have  had  some 
splendid  and  noble  specimens  of  the  red  men  in  our  Con- 
gress,—  an  improvement  on  some  who  are  there  now.  Thus 
would  have  been  realized  the  hope  and  prayer  of  the  good 
old  Canonicus,  the  first  and  fast  friend  of  the  Pilgrims  at 
Plymouth, "  That  the  English  and  my  posterity  shall  live  in 
love  and  peace  together." 


30  INTRODUCTORY. 

Those  who  have  most  fondly  painted  this  ideal  of  what 
might  have  been  the  relations  between  the  two  races  on  this 
continent,  will  even  suggest  what  they  regard  as  approxima- 
tions to  it  in  the  peaceful  connections,  with  results  of  a  com- 
mon prosperity,  which  have  existed  between  colonists  here 
from  over  the  whole  globe,  with  all  languages  and  religions, 
with  unlike  habits  and  modes  of  life. 

It  may  be  said  that  it  is  not  yet  too  late  to  put  this 
deferred  experiment  to  a  trial.  Some  proximate  attempts 
have  indeed  been  made  to  realize  it,  and  are  still  in  progress, 
—  as,  for  instance,  in  reserved  localities  in  Massachusetts, 
Rhode  Island,  Maine,  and  New  York,  where  representa- 
tives of  Indian  tribes  have  remained  in  peaceful  relations 
with  the  whites  by  covenants,  as  has  been  stated,  formed 
far  back  in  our  Colonial  and  Provincial  epochs.  But  to 
have  made  these  fragmentary  and  special  provisions  a  rule 
for  general  application  over  our  whole  domain,  would  have 
called  for  an  exercise  of  wisdom  and  humanity  such  as  has 
asserted  itself  only  since  harsher  methods  had  long  been  in 
practice,  and  penitential  compunctions  for  them  have  pro- 
voked reproaches  for  the  past.  Even  as  the  case  stands 
now,  while  the  humane  sentiment  of  the  age  backed  by  the 
avowed  purposes  of  the  Government, —  and  something  bet- 
ter than  a  mere  feint  of  sincerity  in  effecting  them, —  are 
engaged  to  substitute  peaceful  and  helpful  measures  in  all 
our  relations  with  what  remains  of  the  aboriginal  stock, 
we  are  made  to  realize  the  difficulty  of  the  process.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  the  Indians  have  lost,  if  indeed  they 
ever  had,  the  power  of  standing  as  an  equal  party  with  the 
whites  in  such  an  amicable  arrangement,  and  must  now 
accept  such  terms  as  may  be  dictated  to  them. 

Historical  students  and  readers  of  generations  now  on 
the  stage,  as  they  turn  over  the  early  New  England  annals, 
will  find  their  interest  engaged  by  the  antique  seals,  with 
quaint  devices,  which  were  adopted  for  the  formal  attesta- 
tion of  their  records  by  the  colonists  of  Plymouth  and  Mas- 


EUROPEANS  AS   HELPERS   OF  THE  INDIANS.  31 

sachusetts  Bay.  The  seal  of  Plymouth  Colony,  with  the  date 
1620,  presents  on  the  quarterings  of  the  shield  four  naked 
Indians,  bowed  on  one  knee,  with  forest  trees  around  them. 
The  seal  is  without  a  legend,  but  the  savages  each  hold  up 
what  seems  to  be  a  blazing  or  a  flaming  heart,  in  petition  or 
offering.  We  are  without  contemporary  information  as  to 
the  origin  of  this  seal,  the  date  of  its  adoption,  or  the  in- 
tent of  its  device.  But  the  noteworthy  point  for  us  is,  that 
the  seal,  whatever  it  was  meant  to  signify,  was  the  inven- 
tion of  the  white  man,  not  in  any  sense  an  expression  of 
the  desire  of  the  savages,  or  a  solicitation  from  them  for 
the  white  man's  coming  here. 

Even  more  to  the  point  are  the  device  and  legend  on  the 
seal  of  the  Bay  Colony.  That  was  prepared  and  adopted  in 
England,  and  sent  over  here,  in  silver,  in  1629,  with  the  first 
settlers.  It  represents  a  stalwart,  muscular  savage,  naked, 
save  as  a  few  forest  leaves  shade  him,  standing  among  his 
pine-trees,  an  arrow  in  his  right  hand,  a  bow  in  the  left,  and 
on  a  scroll  is  inscribed,  as  coming  from  his  lips,  the  Mace- 
donian cry  to  the  Apostles, — "  Come  over  and  help  us ! "  It 
was  an  ingenious  device  of  our  fathers  thus  to  represent  the 
natives  of  the  soil,  in  their  forlorn  state  of  bodily  and  spirit- 
ual nakedness  and  heathenism,  plaintively  appealing  to  the 
white  man  to  come  to  their  deliverance.  The  specimen  In- 
dian on  the  seal,  well  fed  and  muscular,  does  not  look  as  if 
he  needed  any  help,  except  in  the  matter  of  apparel ;  in  that, 
indeed,  his  need  is  urgent.  So  it  is  pleasant  to  read  that 
the  first  Indian  whom  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  met, —  Samo- 
set, —  being  in  the  costume  of  Nature,  received  from  them 
the  following  articles  of  clothing,  so  far  as  they  would  go 
towards  making  up  a  respectable  wardrobe :  "  A  hat,  a  pair 
of  stockings  and  shoes,  a  shirt,  and  a  piece  of  cloth  to  tie 
about  his  waist." 

If  any  of  the  native  stock  here  in  later  years,  when  their 
race  was  all  wasting  away  from  our  coast,  had  the  skill  to 
interpret  the  devices  on  the  colony  seals,  they  must  have 


32  INTRODUCTORY. 

thought  that  the  white  man's  "help"  had  been  but  sorrow 
for  them.  The  Dutch  colonists  of  New  York  were  more 
frank,  at  least,  in  avowing  the  main  object  of  their  coming, 
for  they  chose  a  beaver  for  their  shield  seal. 

The  deliberate  judgment  of  that  observing  and  thoughtful 
missionary  Lafitau  is  summed  up  in  these  words  :  "  The 
Indians  have  lost  more  by  imitating  our  vices  than  they  have 
gained  by  availing  themselves  of  those  arts  which  might 
have  added  to  the  comforts  and  conveniences  of  life."  Yet 
among  the  many  radical  differences  of  judgment  which  have 
found  expression  by  intelligent  and  competent  observers, 
and  which  cover  most  of  the  matters  of  fact,  with  com- 
ments upon  them,  in  the  whole  survey  of  the  relations  be- 
tween the  whites  and  the  Indians  on  this  continent,  we 
are  to  recognize  this,  namely, —  the  avowal  of  the  opinion 
that  the  intrusion  and  agency  of  the  whites  have,  on  the 
whole,  accrued  to  the  benefit,  the  relief,  the  improvement  of 
the  native  stock.  It  has  been  stoutly  affirmed  that  no  addi- 
tional havoc  or  horrors  have  attended  the  warfare  of  civil- 
ized men  against  the  savages,  beyond  those  which,  with  their 
rude  weapons,  their  fiendish  passions,  and  their  ingenuities 
of  torture,  they  had  been  for  ages  inflicting  on  each  other. 
And  it  has  been  boldly  argued,  that,  though  civilization 
mastered  the  Indians  rough-shod,  it  has  dropped  on  its 
way  reliefs,  implements,  favors,  and  influences  which  have 
mollified  and  reduced  barbarism,  and  added  resources  to- 
wards lifting  them  from  a  mode  of  life  hardly  above  that 
of  brutes. 

It  is  within  the  life-period  of  the  present  generation  that 
the  whole  development  of  the  relations  between  the  whites 
and  the  Indians — protracted  through  the  preceding  cen- 
turies— has  been  rapidly  matured  towards  what  is  in  imme- 
diate prospect  as  some  decisive  and  final  disposal  of  the 
issue.  During  those  previous  centuries,  steady  as  has  been 
the  process  of  the  displacement  of  the  Indians,  it  was  pur- 
sued under  the  supposed  palliating  condition  that  their  re- 


THE  PRESSURE  UPON  THE  INDIANS.          33 

moval,  by  being  crowded  on  to  more  remote  refuges,  was 
provided  for  by  an  undefined  extent  and  wealth  of  western 
territory  of  like  features  to  the  regions  from  which  they 
were  driven  ;  and  that  in  those  unpenetrated  depths  of  the 
continent  they  might  for  indefinite  periods  pursue  their 
wonted  habits  of  barbarous  life,  subsisting  by  the  chase. 
So  long  as  this  resource  was  left,  the  full  problem  of  the 
fate  of  the  Indian  did  not  press  as  now  for  immediate 
solution.  While  the  superb  valleys  of  the  affluents  of  the 
Missouri,  the  Platte,  the  Red  River,  the  Mackenzie,  the  Col- 
umbia, the  Colorado,  and  the  Sacramento  were  still  uiitrav- 
ersed  wildernesses,  it  seemed  as  if  tribes  which  never 
made  any  fixed  improvements  of  the  soil  essential  to  and 
consequent  upon  their  tenure  of  it,  might  even  prove  gain- 
ers by  moving  on  and  taking  their  chances  with  previous 
roamers  over  spaces  large  enough  for  them  all.  Circum- 
stances have  hurried  on  the  active  working  of  new  agencies 
with  a  rush  of  enterprises  to  what  must  be  a  forced,  or 
a  deliberately  chosen  and  wise,  conclusion.  As  soon  as  the 
continent  was  opened  on  the  Pacific  ocean,  with  a  more 
vigorous  ardor  than  the  languid  dalliance  of  the  Spanish 
navigators,  there  began  an  era  which  was  as  foreboding  to 
the  savages  as  it  was  quickening  to  the  whites.  Other  agen- 
cies, all  vitalized  with  the  spirit  of  modern  zeal  and  schem- 
ing, directed  by  scientific  as  well  as  by  adventurous  aims, 
and  kindled  by  a  revival  of  the  same  passion  for  the  pre- 
cious metals  as  that  which  blazed  in  the  first  discovery  of 
the  continent,  accomplished  in  a  score  of  years  changes  such 
as  had  been  wrought  before  in  no  whole  century.  The  dis- 
covery of  rich  mines  and  the  search  for  more,  the  piercing 
advance  of  railways  and  telegraphs  which  came  to  meet 
each  other  in  the  centre  of  the  continent,  the  occupancy  of 
extensive  ranches,  the  steady  sweep  onwards  of  emigrant 
trains  turning  the  Indian  trails  into  great  highways,  and 
the  subtile  instruments  of  Government  engineers  and  ex- 
plorers,—  all  combined  to  convert  what  had  been  known  as 


34  INTRODUCTORY. 

the  Great  American  Desert  into  regions  as  accurately  sur- 
veyed and  as  adequately  delineated  on  maps  as  are  the  feat- 
ures of  land  and  water  and  geological  formation  of  one  of 
the  old  States.  The  single  fact  that  within  the  last  decade 
of  years  more  than  a  million  of  buffaloes  have  been  annu- 
ally slaughtered  for  their  hides,  the  carcasses  being  left  to 
the  wolves,  has  been  a  significant  token  that  the  extinction 
of  the  game  would  come  to  be  a  constraining  condition  of 
the  fate  of  the  red  man.  Meanwhile,  alike  on  the  northern 
and  on  the  southern  borders  of  our  national  domain,  the 
pressure  of  the  same  quickening  and  goading  enterprises 
has  contemporaneously  aided  to  encircle  the  former  limit- 
less range  of  the  savages  till  they  are,  as  it  were,  coralled  in 
the  centre  of  a  circumscribed  white  occupancy.  The  break- 
ing of  the  monopoly  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  which 
from  its  first  charter  not  only  discountenanced  colonization, 
but  jealously  forbade  even  the  exploration  of  the  depths  of 
the  wilderness  in  order  that  they  might  be  reserved  for  the 
traffic  in  fur-bearing  animals,  has  given  place  to  an  eager 
rivalry  in  British  enterprise  in  settling  and  improving  its 
territory,  aided  by  largesses  for  opening  its  own  transcon- 
tinental railway.  Simultaneously  our  own  Indian  Territory 
on  the  south  —  so  solemnly  covenanted  to  the  exclusive 
occupancy  of  the  five  so-called  civilized  tribes,  as  well  as 
to  remnants  of  others  under  treaty  —  is  threatened  with  a 
gridiron  system  of  railways.  The  demands  of  civilized 
intercourse  and  of  commercial  and  passenger  traffic  are 
made  inexorable.  Nor  do  the  hundred  and  twenty-nine 
loosely  bounded  spaces  marked  on  the  latest  maps  as  Res- 
ervations answer  to  their  titles.  They  are  but  mocking 
securities  against  steady  encroachments  by  individuals  or 
companies  of  such  as  covet  them ;  and  when  the  clash  be- 
tween the  greed  of  the  white  man  and  the  covenanted  rights 
of  the  Indian  ripens  into  an  open  feud  and  expands  into 
an  armed  collision,  the  Government  is  ever  ready  for  any 
breach  of  its  faith  which  may  be  accounted  to  the  issue  of 


THE  PRESENT  "  INDIAN  QUESTION."  35 

civilization  against  barbarism.  The  Indian  tribes  in  what 
we  call  our  national  domain  are  now  in  the  centre  of  a  cir- 
cle which  is  contracting  its  circumference  all  around  them. 
Having  passed  through  their  successive  relations  of  hosts, 
enemies,  pensioners,  and  subjects  of  the  white  men,  they 
are  now  the  wards  of  the  nation.  The  feeding,  clothing, 
and  the  attempted  process  of  civilizing  them  by  fixed  resi- 
dence and  labor,  costly  as  the  outlay  is,  is  admitted  on  all 
sides  to  be  less  than  the  expense  of  fighting  them. 

In  this  general  survey  of  the  chief  subjects  which  will 
come  before  us  for  fuller  observation  as  we  open  them  for 
relation  or  discussion  in  dealing  with  our  large  theme,  we 
have  glanced  at  topics  several  of  which  might  well,  for  their 
interest  and  importance,  form  the  matter  of  many  separate 
volumes, — as  indeed  they  have  done.  Just  at  this  time, 
under  the  title  of  the  "  Indian  Question,"  our  statesmen 
and  philanthropists,  our  military  men  and  our  practical 
economists,  have  presented  to  them  a  subject  of  engrossing 
interest ;  and  there  is  a  strong  pressure  for  a  resolute  and 
decisive  dealing  with  it.  The  history  of  the  past  is  reverted 
to  only  for  its  rebukes  and  warnings.  What  is  in  general 
terms  impersonated  as  the  conscience  of  the  nation, — as  if 
asserting  itself  for  the  first  time  in  its  full  and  emphatic 
authority,  or  lifting  itself  free  of  all  the  embarrassments  of 
expediency  and  policy,  —  insists  that  time  and  opportunity 
favor  the  application  of  absolute  justice,  with  reparation  so 
far  as  is  possible  for  the  past,  and  wise  and  kindly  protec- 
tive benevolence  at  whatever  cost  for  the  future,  in  the 
relations  between  our  Government  and  the  remnant  of  the 
aborigines  on  our  domain.  But  it  is  always  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  disengage  an  ancient  grievance  from  its  en- 
tail of  follies,  errors,  and  wrongs  in  the  past,  and  to  deal 
with  it  as  if  free  of  prejudiced  and  embarrassed  conditions. 
In  dealing  with  the  present  Indian  question,  it  comes  to 
us  perplexed  and  obstructed  not  only  by  previous  mistakes, 
but  also  by  existing  and  impracticable  covenants.  New 


36  INTRODUCTORY. 

elements  of  complication  are  constantly  presenting  them- 
selves to  perplex  the  original  problem  as  to  what  were  to 
be  the  relations  between  a  barbarous  and  a  civilized  people, 
— the  former  being  in  a  supposed  rightful  possession  of  terri- 
tory, while  the  latter,  conscious  of  the  power  to  secure  and 
hold  it,  have  found  warrant  for  its  exercise  in  arguments  of 
natural  reason  or  in  interpreting  the  divine  purposes.  The 
substance  and  shape  of  the  original  problem  have  also  been 
modified  by  physical  and  natural  agencies,  by  the  trial 
of  experiments  and  the  development  of  the  resources  of  the 
country.  A  tribe  of  Indians  seemingly  contented  with  a 
treaty  stipulation  assigning  to  them  a  vast  expanse  of  ter- 
ritory, supposed  to  be  adequate  to  their  subsistence  in  their 
own  mode  of  life,  find  their  hunting  grounds  encompassed 
by  the  encroachments  of  the  whites  on  their  borders,  the 
game  becoming  scarce  and  threatening  soon  to  disappear, 
while  the  old  forest  weapons  lose  their  skill.  So  the  In- 
dians ask  for  the  arms  and  ammunition  of  the  white  men, 
and  for  supplies  of  life  which  did  not  form  conditions  of 
the  compact  with  them.  They  become  restless  on  their 
reservations,  even  if  not  interfered  with  there.  In  the 
mean  time  enterprising  white  explorers  come  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  wealth  in  the  streams  and  bowels  of  some  of 
those  reservations,  and  on  the  plea  that  these  vast  treasures 
were  not  known  to  exist  when  the  mere  wild  land  was 
covenanted  to  a  tribe,  and  that  they  were  not  in  the  bar- 
gain, and  more  than  all  that  they  are  useless  to  the  In- 
dians, the  treaty  is  trifled  with;  and  the  Government, 
which  is  not  as  strong  as  the  people,  is  forced  to  be  a  party 
to  a  breach  of  faith. 

While,  therefore,  statesmanship  and  philanthropy  are  in 
our  time  forced  to  face  the  present  Indian  question  as  one 
for  immediate  disposal  on  urgent  demands  of  wisdom  and 
duty,  of  policy  and  of  right,  it  is  not  strange  that  there 
should  be  a  divergency  of  judgment,  often  manifested  in 
clamor  and  discord  and  passion,  as  to  the  method  and 


FORECASTING   THE   FATE   OF  THE   ABORIGINES.  37 

course  of  action  which  will  be  practicable,  effectual,  and 
satisfactory.  As,  in  dealing  with  realities  and  with  human 
nature  as  it  is,  we  have  to  recognize  the  facts  which  make  up 
the  whole  of  the  conditions  of  any  given  problem  to  be  dis- 
posed of,  we  have  again  to  note,  as  directly  and  sharply  bear- 
ing upon  the  present  urgency  of  the  Indian  question,  the 
fact  already  referred  to,  and  to  be  in  the  sequel  more  delib- 
erately considered,  that  there  is  another  element  besides 
statesmanship  and  philanthropy,  which  manifests  itself  not 
always  in  the  discussion  of,  but  in  pronounced  opinion  and 
in  strong  feeling  concerning,  this  question.  Of  course  it 
would  be  impossible  to  estimate  the  number  or  proportion 
of  the  people  of  our  country  who  hold  the  opinion  and 
who  cherish  the  feeling  now  in  view ;  but  we  know  that 
there  are  very  many  among  us,  and  that  they  are  very 
sturdy  and  unflinching  in  their  conviction,  who  hold  that 
the  iron  sway  of  mastery,  the  complete  domination  over 
the  Indians,  even  if  their  absolute  extermination  follows, 
is  the  only  solution  of  the  problem.  While  such  a  stern 
and  relentless  conviction  as  this  underlies,  it  may  be,  the 
opinions  of  some  members  of  Congress,  of  many  of  our 
leading  military  officers,  and  of  agents  and  superintendents 
of  Indian  affairs,  as  well  as  of  reckless  and  unprincipled 
frontiersmen  and  miners,  it  is  easy  to  infer  to  what  extent 
statesmanship  and  philanthropy  will  find  their  schemes 
baffled.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  desperate  fore- 
casting of  the  destiny  of  our  aboriginal  tribes  has,  latently 
or  in  avowal,  swayed  the  minds  of  a  vast  number  in  each 
generation  here,  and  has  by  no  means  been  confined  to 
those  violent,  merciless  fighters  and  desperadoes  who  have 
done  their  utmost  to  carry  out  the  presumed  decree  of  fate. 
The  Spanish  invaders,  as  we  shall  see,  assumed  to  be  the 
agents  of  that  destiny ;  but  none  the  less  did  Puritan 
ministers  of  New  England  find  prophecy  and  divine  aid  in 
alliance  with  their  own  firelocks  and  swords  in  helping 
it  on  to  fulfilment.  So  far  as  under  the  pressure  of 


38  INTRODUCTORY. 

the  Indian  question  to-day,  the  ultimate  extinction  of  the 
Indian  is  with  misgivings,  regrets,  or  full  and  acquiescent 
persuasion,  held  to  be  its  only  solution,  while  the  belief 
may  embarrass  and  obstruct  the  wisest  and  most  humane 
schemes,  it  can  be  forced  into  silence  or  falsified  only  when 
a  protective,  a  benevolent,  and  a  steadily  effectual  policy 
for  the  humane  and  rightful  dealing  with  the  Indians,  in 
prolonged  generations  on  this  continent,  is  demonstrating 
its  success. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  rehearse,  in  its  graphic  and 
signally  significant  details,  the  occasion,  the  scene,  the 
actors,  and  the  consequences  marking  the  first  introduction 
of  themselves  by  men  of  the  Old  World  to  the  wondering 
natives  of  this  unveiled  continent. 


CHAPTER  I. 

SPANISH   DISCOVERERS  AND  INVADERS. 

A  LIVELY,  indeed  a  dramatic,  interest  attaches  to  the 
occasion  and  the  incidents  which  first  brought  together  for 
recognition,  for  sight  and  intercourse,  representatives  of 
the  human  family  that  had  been  parted  by  oceans  for  un- 
known centuries.  Neither  of  these  branches  of  a  common 
stock  had  knowledge  of  the  other.  There  was  to  be  a  first 
meeting,  as  of  strangers.  In  view  of  all  the  dismal  and 
harrowing  results  which  were  to  follow,  burdening  with 
tragedies  of  woe  and  cruelty  the  relations  between  the 
white  man  and  the  red  man,  especially  those  of  the  Span- 
iards and  the  natives  of  the  American  islands,  one  might 
be  tempted  to  wish  that  the  ocean  had  been  impassable. 
The  more  grateful,  therefore,  is  it  to  recall  the  fact,  that 
the  very  first  contact  and  recognition  between  those  of  the 
Old  World  and  the  New,  when  the  time  had  come  that 
they  were  no  longer  to  be  deferred,  present  to  us  a  sweet 
and  lovely  picture.  Would  that  its  charm  and  repose  of 
simple  peacefulness  might  have  been  the  long  perspective 
of  the  then  following  ages ! 

The  great-hearted  Admiral  had  kept  his  high  resolve 
and  hope  through  all  the  weary  delays  of  his  course  over 
unknown  seas,  with  panic-stricken  and  mutinous  sailors. 
They  might  reckon  over  what  part  of  the  expanse  of  waters 
they  had  passed  in  their  poor  vessels,  but  knew  not  how 
much  remained.  But  signs  of  land  had  appeared  in  sea- 


40  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

weed,  drift-wood,  and  birds,  and  a  stick  carved  by  tool. 
On  the  night  of  Thursday,  Oct.  11,  1492,  Columbus,  stand- 
ing, near  midnight,  on  the  poop  of  his  vessel,  saw  a  mov- 
ing light,  which  afterwards  proved,  as  he  surmised,  to  be 
a  torch,  carried  from  one  hut  to  another,  on  the  island 
which  he  named  San  Salvador.  On  the  next  morning, 
clad  in  complete  armor,  with  the  banner  of  Spain,  his  cap- 
tains around  him,  bearing  the  royal  insignia  of  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella,  he  landed  on  a  spot  which  he  says  was  fresh 
and  fruitful  like  a  garden  full  of  trees.  The  natives  in 
simple  amazement  looked  on,  as  they  lined  the  shores  and 
saw  their  mysterious  visitors  kneel  with  devout  tears  on 
the  earth. 

And  here  is  Columbus' s  report  of  his  first  impression 
from  those  whom  he  looked  upon  then  as  simply  materials 
for  making  Christians  :  — 

"  Because  they  had  much  friendship  for  us,  and  because  I  knew 
they  were  people  that  would  deliver  themselves  better  to  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  and  be  converted  more  through  love  than  by  force,  I 
gave  to  some  of  them  some  colored  caps,  and  some  strings  of  glass 
beads  for  their  necks,  and  many  other  things  of  little  value,  with 
which  they  were  delighted,  and  were  so  entirely  ours  that  it  was  a 
marvel  to  see.  The  same  afterwards  came  swimming  to  the  ships' 
boats  where  we  were,  and  brought  us  parrots,  cotton  threads  in 
balls,  darts,  and  many  other  things  which  we  gave  them,  such  as 
bells  and  small  glass  beads.  In  fine,  they  took  and  gave  all  of 
whatever  they  had  with  good-will.  But  it  appeared  to  me  they 
were  a  people  very  poor  in  everything.  They  went  totally  naked. 
They  were  well  made,  with  very  good  faces,  hair  like  horse-hair, 
their  color  yellow,  and  they  painted  themselves  ;  without  arms, 
save  darts  pointed  with  a  fish's  tooth.  They  ought  to  make  faith- 
ful servants  and  of  good  understanding,  for  I  see  that  very  quickly 
they  repeat  all  that  is  said  to  them ;  and  I  believe  they  would 
easily  be  converted  to  Christianity,  for  it  appeared  to  me  that  they 
had  no  creed."  l 

1  Navarrete,  Col.  vol.  i.  p.  21,  as  quoted  by  Arthur  Helps,  in  "  The  Con- 
querors of  the  New  World  and  their  Bondsmen,"  vol.  i.  p.  105. 


THE  GREETING   OP   THE   STRANGERS.  41 

Assisted  very  kindly  afterwards  by  one  of  the  native 
chiefs,  when  one  of  his  caravels  had  shoaled,  he  writes  to 
their  Majesties  of  the  Indians :  — 

"  They  are  a  loving,  uncovetous  people,  so  docile  in  all  things 
that  I  assure  your  Highnesses  I  believe  in  all  the  world  there  is  not 
a  better  people  or  a  better  country.  They  love  their  neighbors  as 
themselves,  and  they  have  the  sweetest  and  the  gentlest  way  of 
talking  in  the  world,  and  always  with  a  smile."  A 

When  the  Protestant  French  colony,  under  Ribault,  in 
1562,  entered  the  St.  John  River  in  Florida,  they  were 
impressed  in  a  similarly  enthusiastic  way  with  the  grace, 
simplicity,  and  natural  charms  of  the  kindly  savages  who 
received  them  with  full  confidence  and  courtesy.  Their 
journalist  portrays  the  natives  as  in  stature,  shape,  features, 
and  manners  manly,  dignified,  and  agreeable.  The  women, 
well  favored  and  modest^  permitted  no  one  "  dishonestly  to 
approach  too  near  them  ;"  and  "both  men  and  women  were 
so  beautifully  painted  that  the  best  painter  of  Europe  could 
not  amende  it." 

The  Spaniards  and  the  French  very  soon  found,  and  had 
long  and  sharp  experience  of  the  fact,  that  even  these  na- 
tives of  the  Southern  isles  and  peninsula,  who  seem  to  have 
been  of  a  more  gentle  and  tractable  spirit  than  those  of  the 
North,  had  in  them  latent  passions  which,  when  stung  by 
oppression  and  outrage,  could  assert  their  fury. 

It  is  pleasant  to  note  with  emphasis  the  fact,  that,  in  the 
conduct  and  course  of  his  first  voyage,  Columbus  having 
been  ever  anxious  to  secure  that  result,  his  intercourse  with 
the  natives  was  wholly  peaceful.  By  his  resolute  discipline 
over  a  comparatively  small  number  of  men,  by  his  regard 
for  their  safety,  and  his  desire  to  reciprocate  the  gentle 
courtesy  he  had  received  from  the  children  of  Nature,  who 
looked  upon  him  and  his  followers  as  having  veritably  come 

1  Navarrete,  Col.  vol.  i.  p.  21,  as  quoted  by  Arthur  Helps,  in  "The  Con- 
querors of  the  New  World  and  their  Bondsmen,"  vol.  i.  p.  105. 


42  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

among  them  from  the  skies,  he  succeeded  in  repressing 
every  insult  and  wrong,  and  for  a  time  deferred  violence 
and  the  shedding  of  blood.  The  first  impression  which  the 
Spaniards  received  of  the  inhabitants  of  those  islands  ear- 
liest visited  was,  that  their  docility  and  feminine  qualities 
wholly  disabled  them  even  of  resentment,  and  would  make 
all  aggression  on  their  part  an  impossibility.  This  impres- 
sion continued,  and  was  for  a  time  strengthened  on  the 
second  voyage,  opening  other  islands,  —  with  an  exception, 
however,  soon  to  be  stated.  Those  fair  and  luxuriant  re- 
gions, free  of  wild  beasts,  spontaneously  yielding  the  supplies 
of  life  to  the  indolent  and  happy  natives,  suggested  the 
image  of  Paradise  to  the  care-worn  and  passionate  rovers 
from  the  Old  World.  It  was  natural  that  the  unorthodox 
fancy  should  present  itself,  even  to  the  minds  of  ecclesias- 
tics, that  these  favored  beings,  though  in  human  form, 
might  possibly  not  be  of  the  lineage  of  Adam,  nor  sharers 
in  the  primeval  curse,  as  they  seemed  so  innocent  and 
guileless,  and  needed  not  to  win  their  bread  by  the  sweat  of 
their  brow.  When  the  prow  of  Columbus  was  headed  for 
his  return  to  Spain,  as  he  stopped  on  his  way  at  the  eastern 
end  of  Hispaniola,  a  party  of  the  natives,  whom  he  describes 
as  armed  and  ferocious  in  aspect  and  treacherous  in  their 
manifestations,  presented  themselves  on  the  shore  and  pro- 
voked hostilities.  Here  the  first  acts  of  violence  occurred, 
and  the  first  blood  was  shed  on  both  sides.  But  Columbus, 
so  far  as  he  could  understand  the  communications  made  to 
him  in  answer  to  his  questions  as  to  the  regions  where  gold 
abounded,  received  information  of  other  neighboring  isl- 
ands,— afterwards  known  as  the  Caribbean,  or  Antilles, — 
where  the  natives  were  predatory,  piratical,  and  warlike, 
invading  their  neighbors  for  slaughter  and  captives,  and 
addicted  to  cannibalism.  Of  these  more  brave  and  savage 
natives  he  was  afterwards  to  have  dire  experience.  We 
may  therefore  rest  with  the  grateful  conclusion,  that  the 
first  intercourse  between  the  representatives  of  the  two 


THE  ILLUSION   OP  COLUMBUS.  43 

races  began  and  ended  in  amity.  Nor  does  it  appear  that 
those  nine  natives  whom  Columbus  transported  were  taken 
against  their  will,  or  were  treacherously  kidnapped,  as, 
more  than  a  century  later,  were  Indians  on  the  New  Eng- 
land coast  by  British  freebooters. 

Before  Columbus  sailed  on  his  return,  one  of  his  vessels 
having  been  shipwrecked  on  the  western  end  of  Hispaniola, 
the  cacique  of  the  natives  of  that  district,  Guacanagari, 
had  shown  him  sympathy  and  kindness,  offering  him  all 
friendly  help.  The  spot  was  so  lovely,  and  life  seemed  so 
attractive  there,  -that  the  Admiral  yielded  to  the  wishes 
of  many  of  his  men  that  he  would  leave  them  as  a  colony 
on  the  shore,  to  pursue  the  objects  of  the  discoverers.  Ob- 
taining the  consent  and  the  promise  of  supplies  from  the 
cacique,  Columbus,  using  portions  of  the  wreck  for  the 
purpose,  constructed  a  fort,  and  with  explicit  and  dis- 
creet commands  for  caution,  good  discipline,  and  peaceful 
courses,  he  left  in  it  thirty-nine  men.  The  subsequent 
woes  of  the  Admiral,  and  the  opening  of  hostile  rela- 
tions with  the  natives,  are  to  be  traced  to  this  ill-omened 
experiment. 

The  site  of  the  colony  was  called  Navidad,  the  Admiral 
having  landed  there  on  Christmas  day.  He  returned  to 
Spain  with  undiminished  confidence  in  his  visions  of  pre- 
cious wealth  from  the  New  World.  His  illusion  that  he 
was  on  the  confines  of  India  was  confirmed  in  the  chance 
similarity  of  sounds  which  fell  upon  his  ears  in  the  names 
of  places.  When  the  natives,  pointing  in  the  direction 
whence  gold  came,  used  the  word  "  Cubanacan "  ("  the 
centre  of  Cuba"),  it  signified  to  the  Admiral  the  Grand 
Khan.  The  island  which  they  called  "  Cibao,"  and  which 
really  proved  the  richest  in  treasure,  was  this  longed-for 
Cipango. 

When  Columbus  made  his  second  visit  to  the  Islands,  it 
was  with  a  company  of  fifteen  hundred  men,  of  every  class 
and  condition  of  life,  clerical,  noble,  professional,  and  menial. 


44  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS  AND   INVADERS. 

There  was  a  fleet  of  seventeen  vessels,  laden  with  all  that 
was  needed  for  use  and  luxury  and  defence  for  a  prosperous 
colony,  with  all  sorts  of  seeds  and  plants,  with  domestic 
animals  and  poultry,  and,  above  all,  with  mules  and  horses, 
the  marvel  and  terror  of  the  natives,  realizing  to  them  the 
fable  of  the  Centaur. 

Before  visiting  the  colony  which  he  had  left  at  the  fort, 
Columbus  touched  at  Santa  Cruz,  one  of  the  Antilles.  Here 
he  had  a  skirmish,  blood  being  shed  on  both  sides,  with  some 
of  those  Caribs,  of  whom  he  had  heard  such  warning  be- 
cause of  their  courage,  ferocity,  and  predatory  rovings. 
More  terrible  yet  was  their  repute  as  cannibals. 

That  beautiful  island  realm,  which  has  borne  successively 
the  names  of  Hispaniola,  St.  Domingo,  and  Hayti,  was  to  be 
the  scene  where  disaster,  sorrow,  outrage,  carnage,  and  every 
form  and  degree  of  oppression,  cruelty,  treachery,  and  atro- 
city were  to  introduce  the  tragic  and  revolting  history, 
lengthened  and  crimsoned  in  the  years  to  follow,  of  the  re- 
lations between  the  Spaniards  and  the  natives.  The  island 
in  all  that  splendid  archipelago,  second  in  size  only  to  Cuba, 
and  richer  and  fairer  than  any  other  in  the  group,  was  esti- 
mated at  its  discovery,  perhaps  with  some  exaggeration,  to 
have  on  its  thirty  thousand  square  miles  a  population  of  a 
million  souls.  Las  Casas  says  the  population  had  been 
1,200,000.  Though,  as  afterwards  appeared,  there  had 
been  feuds  between  the  wilder  mountain  tribes  and  the  more 
peaceful  dwellers  by  the  shores  and  in  the  valleys,  all  the 
chroniclers  describe  the  natives  as  gentle  and  kindly,  living 
an  indolent,  tranquil  life,  without  care  or  labor,  and  present- 
ing an  image  of  Arcadian  simplicity.  The  invaders  after- 
wards learned  that  the  island  was  divided  into  five  districts, 
under  the  same  number  of  caciques. 

As  has  been  said,  the  cacique  or  chieftain  of  the  tribe  in 
whose  bounds  the  little  colony  with  its  citadel  had  been 
planted,  had  shown  himself  chivalrously  courteous  and 
friendly  to  the  wrecked  adventurers,  and  promised  Colum- 


THE   FIRST  AGGRESSION.  45 

bus  a  loyal  fidelity.  When  the  Admiral  anxiously  but 
hopefully  approached  the  spot,  it  was  to  confront  a  bitter 
disappointment.  The  disaster  which  lie  had  to  contemplate 
was  shrouded  in  a  mystery  which  was  never  wholly  cleared. 
Desolation  and  silence  rested  on  the  scene.  Havoc  and  de- 
sertion everywhere  showed  their  evidences,  without  reveal- 
ing the  cause,  the  occasion,  or  the  agents.  Not  a  Spaniard 
survived  on  the  spot,  or  ever  was  found  to  tell  the  story ;  and 
the  Admiral  was  left  to  surmise  an  explanation,  with  such 
unsatisfactory  help  as  he  afterwards  had  from  the  natives. 
The  inferences  fully  certified  were,  that  the  colonists,  mostly 
of  low  character,  had  become  restless,  insubordinate,  and 
lawless,  had  fallen  into  neglect  of  all  prudence,  and  broken 
into  discord.  They  had  scattered  themselves  among  the 
natives,  oppressing  them,  and  indulging  in  the  grossest 
licentiousness,  thus  provoking  a  revenge  which  had  fatally 
accomplished  its  work.  With  a  heavy  heart  the  Admiral 
faced  the  calamity.  He  soon  selected  a  more  healthful  site 
for  a  town,  which  he  called  Isabella,  to  be  occupied  by  the 
edifices  and  tilled  fields  of  one  thousand  colonists,  whose 
main  and  consuming  passion  was  the  search  for  gold.  Co- 
lumbus sent  back  to  Spain  twelve  of  the  vessels,  retaining 
the  other  five.  In  these  return  vessels  were  men,  women, 
and  children  captured  on  the  Caribbean  islands.  It  may 
have  been  under  the  prompting  of  a  humane  purpose,  how- 
ever darkened  in  its  view  of  justice  or  expediency,  that  the 
Admiral,  while  sending  over  more  than  five  hundred  cap- 
tives, in  a  letter  to  their  Majesties  proposed  for  the  future 
to  transport  to  Spain  an  indefinite  number  of  natives  to  be 
sold  as  slaves,  —  the  blessing  accruing  to  them  of  being 
instructed  in  Christianity  and  rescued  from  perdition,  while 
the  proceeds  of  their  sale  would  relieve  the  enormous  ex- 
pense of  the  enterprise  to  the  royal  treasury,  and  procure 
live-stock  and  other  supplies  for  the  colony. 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  the  first  company  of  natives 
transported  for  sale  as  slaves  were  thought  to  be  not  un- 


46  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

fairly  consigned  to  that  fate  on  the  ground  that  they  were 
cannibals.  It  was  preposterous  to  suppose  that,  having 
once  been  sold,  they  would  be  returned  here  as  baptized 
Christians,  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  in  the  conversion  of 
other  Caribs.  But  afterwards  large  gangs  of  captives  were 
committed  to  the  same  fate  simply  as  "  prisoners  of  war." 
Considerable  debate  was  raised  in  the  Spanish  Council  as 
to  the  rightf  ulness  of  this  disposition  of  such  a  class  of 
captives.  But  the  final  decision  allowed  it. 

It  was  on  this  fair  island  that  the  dreams  and  illusions 
which  had  so  sweetly  kindled  and  wrapped  the  imagina- 
tions of  both  races  alike,  were  broken  and  gave  place  to 
ghastly  realities.  The  savages  ceased  to  regard  their  visi- 
tors as  having  swept  down  upon  them  from  a  pure  heaven, 
^and  if  their  theology  had  taken  in  the  alternate  realm  of 
destiny,  would  have  traced  them  as  fiends  to  the  pit  of  all 
horrors.  The  Spaniards  on  their  part  came  to  a  better 
knowledge  of  the  Indian  character  in  its  spirit  and  capaci- 
ties of  passion.  They  found  the  natives  cunning,  ingenious 
in  stratagem,  and  capable  of  duplicity  and  guile;  bold  and 
venturesome  and  courageous  too  in  the  arts  of  war,  with 
javelins,  sharpened  spears,  bows  and  arrows,  and  bucklers. 
They  found  also  that  the  savages  had  a  profound  and  by 
no  means  a  puerile  and  inoperative  religion  of  their  own, 
far  better  in  its  impulses  and  practice  than  that  of  the 
reckless  and  dissolute  marauders.  Sickness,  want  reaching 
to  near  starvation,  utter  unwillingness  to  labor  even  for 
food,  discontent,  a  rebellious  spirit,  bitter  disappointment  of 
hope,  and  the  grossest  indulgence  of  all  foul  passions, — all 
culminated  in  their  effects  at  Isabella.  When  Columbus 
returned  there  from  a  cruise  to  Cubarhe  found  a  state  of 
open  warfare  between  his  colonists  and  many  of  the  native 
chiefs,  who,  goaded  to  desperation,  had  conspired  to  exter- 
minate the  intruders.  Columbus  himself  in  March,  1495, 
took  the  field  with  his  little  army  of  infantry  and  cav- 
alry, and  twenty  of  the  fiercest  blood-hounds,  against  a 


NATIVE   ALLIES   OF   INVADERS.  47 

body  of  the  natives,  perhaps  over-estimated  at  a  hundred 
thousand. 

Here  for  the  first  time,  as  an  example  to  be  followed  all 
along  the  course  of  the  hostilities  between  the  Europeans 
of  every  nationality  and  the  natives,  we  find  the  white  men 
artfully  engaging  the  help  as  allies  of  one  tribe  of  savages 
against  other  hostile  tribes,  —  a  dismal  aggravation  of  all 
the  iniquities  and  atrocities  of  a  wild  warfare.  In  the 
subsequent  swoops  of  Spanish  marauders  and  invaders  in 
South  America  and  in  Mexico,  it  is  safe  to  affirm  that  there 
were  instances  in  which  the  victory  was  won  for  them  by 
their  savage  allies,  numbering  hundreds  to  each  one  of  the 
foreign  soldiery,  without  whose  aid,  with  the  consequent 
discord  and  despair  which  it  caused  to  the  wild  foe,  the 
Spaniards  would  have  been  vanquished  or  starved.  Co- 
lumbus availed  himself  of  the  former  friendship  of  the 
cacique  Guacanagari,  to  engage  his  tribe  against  the  con- 
spiring chieftains ;  and,  by  thus  fomenting  animosities 
among  the  enemy,  won  his  triumph.  The  horse  had  been 
a  most  terrific  spectacle  to  the  natives ;  but  the  blood- 
hound, who  sprang  with  his  unrelaxing  fangs  to  the  neck 
of  his  victim,  and  then  disembowelled  him,  proved  to  be 
a  deadlier  instrumentality.  The  wild  hordes  quailed  before 
their  tormentors ;  and  after  they  had  yielded  in  the  palsy 
of  an  abject  despair,  they  were  allowed  to  make  their  peace 
only  by  submitting  to  a  severe  quarterly  tribute  to  be  paid 
to  the  Spanish  crown.  In  this  opening  act  of  an  ever  deep- 
ening and  lengthening  tragedy,  appeared  the  first  in  the 
line  of  successive  nobles  and  patriots,  of  wise  and  great 
men,  who  have  asserted  themselves  at  intervals  as  organ- 
izers and  heroes  for  the  people  of  the  woods,  to  resist  the 
outrages  of  the  white  man.  Caonabo  was  the  lofty-souled 
patriot  of  Hispaniola.  A  captive  with  unsubdued  and 
scornful  spirit,  he  died  on  his  voyage  to  Spain. 

In  a  voyage  made  by  Alonzo  de  Ojeda  from  Seville,  in 
1499,  —  in  which  he  was  accompanied  by  the  Florentine 


48  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND  INVADERS. 

merchant  and  navigator,  Amerigo  Vespucci,  who  by  strange 
fortune  has  attached  his  name  to  the  continent, —  the  expe- 
dition had  a  bloody  encounter  with  the  Caribs,  taking  many 
of  them  captives  for  the  slave  marts  of  Seville  and  Cadiz. 

Nicholas  de  Ovando,  who  was  in  command  at  Hispaniola 
while  Columbus  was  in  Spain,  by  his  insubordinate,  cruel, 
and  oppressive  course,  baffled  all  the  more  humane  purposes 
of  the  Admiral  for  any  mild  subjugation  and  rule  of  the 
natives.  His  savage  cruelty  and  his  desperate  tyranny  in 
working  the  mines  and  fields  by  the  hard  task-works  of  the 
Indians,  whose  slight  constitutions  unfitted  them  for  any 
kind  of  toil,  visited  upon  them  a  sum  of  horrors  and  of  tor- 
tures. The  apostolic  Las  Casas,  himself  a  witness  of  these 
enormities  and  agonies,  has  described  them  in  terms  and 
images  too  revolting  to  be  traced  in  their  details.  He 
says,  "I  saw  them  with  my  bodily,  mortal  eyes."  Fam- 
ine, despair,  and  madness  drove  multitudes  to  self-destruc- 
tion, and  mothers  suffocated  the  infants  at  their  breasts. 
Ovando  closed  the  succession  of  his  atrocities  by  a  gene- 
ral massacre  of  natives  and  their  chiefs,  committed  under 
the  very  basest  arts  of  duplicity  and  treachery,  while  the 
unsuspecting  victims  were  straining  their  confiding  hospi- 
tality, with  presents,  wild  games,  dances,  and  songs,  for  his 
delight.  The  scene  of  the  outrage  was  that  exquisite  re- 
gion, well-nigh  a  poetic  and  fairy  realm,  on  the  western 
coast  and  promontory  of  the  island,  then  called  Xaragua. 
Anacaona,  the  sister  of  its  cacique,  is  described  as  a  most 
lovely,  intelligent,  and  kindly  woman.  She  was  the  wife  of 
that  noble  chieftain  Caonabo,  whose  death  as  a  captive  on 
the  way  to  Spain  has  just  been  mentioned.  Pardoning 
the  previous  hostility  of  the  Spaniards,  who  had  made  her 
a  widow,  she  had  manifested  to  the  intruders  on  her  do- 
mains the  utmost  forbearance  and  kindness.  A  pretence 
to  justify  the  massacre  was  found  in  a  secret  report  that 
she  and  her  subjects  were  meditating  that  of  the  Spaniards. 
She  herself  was  taken  in  chains  to  St.  Domingo,  and  there 


THE  HAMMOCK   AND   THE   HURRICANE.  49 

hanged.  Ovando  founded  a  town  near  the  scene  of  the 
massacre,  to  which  he  blasphemously  gave  the  name  of  St. 
Mary  of  the  true  Peace ! l  The  five  native  chieftains  of  the 
districts  of  Hispaniola  had  now  perished,  and  the  island  was 
desolate.  Twelve  years  after  his  great  discovery  Columbus 
wrote  to  the  Spanish  monarchs  :  — 

"  The  Indians  of  Hispaniola  were  and  are  the  riches  of  the 
island ;  for  it  is  they  who  cultivate  and  make  the  bread  and  the 
provisions  for  the  Christians,  who  dig  the  gold  from  the  mines,  and 
perform  all  the  offices  and  labors  both  of  men  and  beasts.  I  am 
informed  that  six  parts  out  of  seven  of  the  natives  are  dead,  all 
through  ill-treatment  and  inhumanity,  —  some  by  the  sword,  others 
by  blows  and  cruel  usage,  others  through  hunger."  2 

To  supply  the  actual  needs  of  labor,  after  the  devasta- 
tion and  depopulation  of  the  island,  negro  slaves  were  sent 
to  Hispaniola  in  1505.  Then,  too,  began  another  series  of 
outrages  in  the  forcible  abduction  and  transfer,  under  the 
grossest  deception,  of  natives  of  the  Lucayan  Islands.  In 
five  years  forty  thousand  of  these  were  kidnapped  and  trans- 
ported to  Hispaniola. 

Two  words,  of  widely  contrasted  significations  and  asso- 
ciations, have  been  adopted  into  our  English  speech  from 
the  language  of  the  natives  of  that  once  happy  island, — 
hammock,  or  hamac,  designating  the  couch  of  listless  repose, 
and  hurricane,  the  sound  of  which  aptly  expresses  the  whirl- 
ing tornado  of  tempests  and  waves,  and  well  offsets,  in  its 
symbol  of  Spanish  havoc,  the  bed  of  peace  and  ease. 

Historians,  by  their  use  of  the  term,  have  consented  to 
receive  from  the  first  Spanish  knights-errant  and  marauders 
in  the  New  World  the  respectable  and  colorless  word  Con- 
quest to  define  the  method  of  their  mastery  of  territory 

1  "  La  villa  de  la  vera  Paz."  A  modern  writer,  Captain  Southey  ("His- 
tory of  the  West  Indies,"  vol.  i.  p.  93),  suggests,  as  a  more  appropriate  name, 
Aceldama.  The  armorial  shield  of  the  town  bears  a  dove  with  the  olive 
branch,  a  rainbow,  and  a  cross. 

*  Irving' s  Columbus,  ii.  450. 

4 


50  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS  AND  INVADERS. 

here.  Stately  volumes  in  our  libraries  bear  the  titles  of 
Histories  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  of  Peru,  etc. ;  and 
their  versions  in  other  languages  repeat  the  title.  The  de- 
scendants of  the  French  and  English  colonists  on  this  soil 
may  congratulate  themselves  that  that  word  is  appropriated 
exclusively  to  the  Spanish  freebooters.  For,  by  whatever 
method  other  nationalities  obtained  and  hold  territory  here, 
it  was  not  first  acquired  by  the  intent  of  conquest,  nor  by 
that  way  alone.  The  word  conquest,  by  the  Spaniards,  is 
a  very  tame  one  to  apply  to  the  method  of  their  rapacity 
and  fiendish  inhumanity,  as  they  disembarked  on  these 
virgin  realms,  and  bore  down  upon  its  harmless  native 
tribes  as  with  the  sweep  of  a  vengeful  malice  and  rage. 
Some  other  word  of  our  capable  language  than  conquest 
would  more  fitly  define  the  riot  and  wreck,  the  greed  and 
the  diabolical  cruelty,  of  those  first  invaders.  And  that 
more  fitting  word  would  need  to  be  one  of  the  most  harrow- 
ing and  appalling  in  its  burden  of  outrages  and  woes.  The 
campaigns  of  Cyrus,  of  Alexander,  of  Pompey,  of  Julius 
Caesar,  of  Titus  and  Vespasian,  might  shrink  from  being 
classed  with  the  Spanish  conquest  of  America  ;  and  we 
should  have  to  turn  to  the  ferocities  of  Tamerlane,  of 
Ghengis  Khan,  of  the  princes  of  India  and  Tartary,  and  of 
the  brute  men  of  Africa,  for  points  of  parallel  with  it. 

We  must  remember  the  training  of  centuries,  through 
which  not  only  the  nobles,  but  also  those  of  meanest  rank 
fired  with  Spanish  blood,  had  passed,  and  the  full  results  of 
which  exhibited  themselves  just  at  the  period  of  the  discov- 
ery of  America.  During  six  or  more  of  those  previous 
centuries  the  Spaniard  had  been  a  fighter  for  his  own  terri- 
tory and  creed.  By  desperate  valor  and  inhuman  cruelty 
he  had  driven  the  Moor  from  the  former,  and  had  engaged 
all  the  fury  of  a  heart-consuming  bigotry  in  a  most  devout 
though  craven  superstition  to  impose  the  latter.  Honest, 
painstaking  industry  for  thrift  and  homely  good  had  no 
attraction  for  the  Spaniard.  Nor  would  even  enterprise 


SPIRIT  OP  DISCOVERY  AND   OF  RAPINE.  51 

on  land  or  sea  have  engaged  him,  had  not  its  charms  been 
heightened  not  only  by  the  hope  of  easily  attained  wealth, 
but  by  opportunities  of  marauding  adventure,  and  by  vic- 
tims on  whom  he  might  flesh  his  sword  in  ruthless  carnage. 
In  less  than  four  years  after  Columbus  had  landed  on  the 
island,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  the  natives  —  more  than 
a  third  of  its  population  —  had  been  put  to  death.  There 
seems  to  have  been  something  aimless  in  this  slaughter. 
It  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  been  even  provoked  in  its 
primary  indulgence ;  and  when  the  terrified  and  maddened 
natives  were  driven  to  resort  to  their  simple  methods  of 
defence  or  flight,  there  was  a  wanton  brutality,  a  dia- 
bolical and  mocking  revel  of  atrocity,  in  the  fierce  and 
indiscriminate  method  of  hunting  them  for  havoc  and 
torture. 

The  spirit  of  discovery  had,  from  its  first  stirring  among 
the  people  of  Southern  Europe,  been  associated  with  the 
spirit  of  rapine  and  tyranny,  and  the  enslavement  of  the 
people  whom  it  brought  to  light.  The  discovery,  under 
Prince  Henry  of  Portugal,  of  the  Canary  Islands,  put  them 
as  a  matter  of  course  under  tribute  to  him.  His  naviga- 
tors then  steadily  coursed  their  way  down  the  western  coast 
of  Africa.  Cape  Nam  soon  lost  the  significance  of  its  name, 
"  Not,"  as  defining  a  limit  for  safe  voyaging.  Succes- 
sive adventurers,  beginning  their  enterprises  from  about 
the  year  1400,  skirted  the  African  coast  further  south,  till 
1486,  when  Bartholomew  Diaz  made  his  way  over  six  thou- 
sand miles  of  ocean  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  turned 
the  continent.  Slaves  became  from  the  first  an  article  of 
commerce  for  all  these  voyagers. 

It  fell  to  Alexander  VI.,  on  application  of  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella,  to  confer  on  their  crowns  all  the  lands  in  the 
"  Indies "  discovered  and  to  be  discovered.  When  what 
was  thus  given  away  under  the  name  of  the  Indies  proved 
to  be  a  whole  new  continent,  Francis  I.  of  France,  envy- 
ing the  wealth  which  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  drew  from 


52  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

the  New  World,  said  he  should  like  "  to  see  the  clause  in 
Adam's  will  which  entitled  his  brothers  of  Castile  and 
Portugal  to  divide  the  New  World  between  them."  A 
trifling  fact  as  concerning  this  sweeping  donation  of  a 
whole  continent  to  Spaniards,  as  the  discoverers,  may  not 
be  unworthy  of  notice.  Columbus  had  with  him  on  his 
first  voyage  an  Englishman  and  an  Irishman.  Unhappily 
for  us  they  do  not  appear  to  have  had  any  skill  of  pen  to 
have  served  us  as  journalists  of  the  voyage.  But  let  us 
recognize  them  on  the  Spanish  caravels  as  being  there  to 
represent  the  shares  which  have  fallen  to  Englishmen  and 
Irishmen  on  this  soil ;  and,  if  we  need  the  Pope's  sanction 
to  confirm  our  present  territorial  rights,  let  us  find  it  in  our 
ancestral  claims  through  that  valiant  Englishman  and  his 
Hibernian  companion. 

When,  soon  after  Columbus's  return  from  his  first  voy- 
age, the  sovereigns  applied  to  the  court  of  Rome  for  an 
exclusive  territorial  title  to  the  regions  which  their  Admi- 
ral had  discovered  and  might  yet  discover,  they  appear  to 
have  been  persuaded  that  they  had  already  secured  that 
title  by  the  fact  of  unveiling  new  lands  in  unknown  seas. 
But  influenced  by  jealousy  of  the  Portuguese,  who  had 
already  thus  fortified  their  claims,  they  humbly  asked  the 
same  sanction  from  his  Holiness.  Three  successive  bulls, 
issued  in  1493,  were  intended  to  make  the  papal  donation 
secure  to  all  lands  extending  from  the  northern  to  the 
southern  pole.  The  Portuguese  at  once  challenged  its  act- 
ual and  possible  collision  with  their  own  prior  rights.  The 
other  European  sovereignties  treated  this  exercise  of  the 
papal  prerogative  with  utter  indifference.  Though  they 
allowed  nearly  half  a  century  to  pass  before  they  came  into 
any  direct  rivalry  with  the  Spaniards  as  they  followed  up 
their  first  enterprise,  when  French  and  English  adventure 
entered  on  the  track  the  Pope  was  not  even  appealed  to  as 
an  arbiter.  In  1611  two  small  Spanish  vessels  made  a  feint 
of  assaulting  the  miserable  English  colony  in  Virginia,  but 


THE  CHURCH  VIEW  OF  HEATHENDOM.         63 

gave  over  the  enterprise  under  the  belief  that  the  colony 
was  coming  to  its  own  speedy  end. 

We  must  define  to  our  minds  as  clearly  as  possible  the 
fixed  and  positive  conviction  held  by  all  Christendom  at 
the  era  of  transatlantic  discovery,  anticipatory  of  any  act- 
ual knowledge  of  a  new  race  or  people,  as  to  what  should 
be  the  relation  between  Christians  and  all  other  men  and 
women,  wherever  found  and  whatever  their  condition.  All 
who  were  not  in  the  fold  of  the  holy  Roman  Church 
were  heathens.  Heathen  people  had  no  natural  rights, 
and  could  attain  no  rights  even  of  a  common  humanity, 
but  through  baptism  into  the  fold.  The  great  Reformation 
was  then  about  stirring  in  its  elemental  work ;  but  as  yet 
there  had  been  no  outburst.  It  had  asserted  its  energy  and 
wrought  out  its  radical  changes  in  human  belief  and  prac- 
tice, in  season  to  have  secured  a  most  powerful  influence 
in  deciding  the  conditions  under  which  what  is  now  our 
national  domain  was  actually  settled  by  colonies  of  Euro- 
peans in  the  seventeenth  century.  But  the  era  of  discovery 
was  when  the  old  Church  held  an  unbroken  sway,  and  the 
Pope  was  the  lord  of  Christendom.  Protestants  and  Catho- 
lics, as  we  shall  see,  differed  fundamentally  as  to  their 
primary  relations  and  duties  towards  our  aborigines ;  but 
the  matter  in  many  vital  respects  had  been  prejudiced  by 
the  course  of  the  first  comers  as  Catholics.  The  assump- 
tion, held  as  a  self-evident  truth  by  the  Roman  Church,  was 
that  a  state  of  heathenism  imposed  a  disablement  which 
impaired  all  human  rights  of  property,  liberty,  and  even 
of  life ;  while  the  possession  of  the  true  faith  conferred  au- 
thority of  jurisdiction  over  all  the  earth,  with  the  right  to 
seize  and  hold  all  heathen  territory,  and  to  subjugate  and 
exterminate  all  heathen  people  who  would  not  or  could  not 
be  converted.  As  to  what  was  meant  by  conversion,  its 
means,  methods,  and  evidences,  the  champion  of  the  faith 
being  the  sole  judge  and  arbiter  in  the  case,  there  would  be 
little  satisfaction  in  raising  any  discussion.  .However  arro- 


54  SPANISH  DISCOVERERS  AND  INVADERS. 

gant  and  complacent  this  assumption  may  seem  to  us,  it 
had  so  culminated  in  its  conclusion,  had  become  so  im- 
bedded in  general  belief,  and  was  so  unchallenged,  that  it 
was  held  as  a  self-evident  truth.  The  Pope  was  the  vice- 
gerent of  God,  and  the  depositary  of  supreme  power  over 
men. 

.-  All  that  we  have  had  to  rehearse  of  the  relentless  and 
shocking  barbarities  inflicted  on  our  aborigines  by  Spanish 
invaders  as  disciples  and  champions  of  the  Roman  Church, 
in  their  dealings  with  heathen,  stands  wholly  free  from  any 
sectarian  Protestant  prejudices.  All  our  knowledge  on  the 
subject  is  derived  from  the  documents  of  the  Spanish  and 
Catholic  writers.  They  tell  their  own  story,  in  their  own 
way. 

The  earliest  elaborate  discussion  of  the  fundamental 
question  of  the  right  of  a  Christian  nation  to  make  con- 
quest of  a,  barbarous  and  idolatrous  people,  and  to  assume 
the  mastery  over  them,  was  the  result  of  the  protest  of 
that  noble  enthusiast  and  philanthropist,  Las  Casas,  the 
great  apostle  to  the  Indies.  His  father  had  been  one  of 
Columbus's  ship-mates  in  his  first  voyage.  The  first  sen- 
timent of  pity,  which  afterwards  engaged  the  heart  of  Las 
Casas  towards  the  natives  for  his  whole  following  life,  is 
thus  pleasingly  traced  to  its  source.  Among  the  captives 
taken  to  Spain  by  Columbus  was  a  boy  whom  he  had  given 
to  the  father  of  Las  Casas.  The  father  had  assigned  this 
youth  to  his  son,  then  a  student  at  Salamanca.  "When  Isa- 
bella had  insisted  that  these  captives  should  be  returned, 
the  youth  was  taken  with  them,  much  to  the  grief  of  Las 
Casas.  He  went  with  Ovando  to  Hispaniola  in  1502,  in  his 
twenty-eighth  year,  and  at  once  became  the  friend  and 
champion  of  the  natives  against  the  dire  and  ruthless  bar- 
barities and  the  shocking  outrages,  so  inhuman  and  atro- 
cious, inflicted  upon  them  by  the  Spaniards,  as  they  slew 
them  by  thousands,  after  practising  upon  them  the  foulest 
treacheries,  starving  them,  working  them  to  death  in  the 


LAWFULNESS  OF  A  WAR  OF   CONQUEST.  55 

mines  and  pearl-fisheries,  and  in  some  places  exterminat- 
ing them  altogether.  Las  Casas,  as  his  knowledge  and 
experience  gradually  enlightened  him,  protested  against 
the  whole  course  of  proceeding;  and  at  last,  by  honest  soul 
wisdom,  reached  a  conclusion  which  led  him  to  assail  the 
root  of  the  whole  iniquity,  and  to  deny  the  right  of  con- 
quest, with  the  inferences  and  conclusions  drawn  from  the 
false  assumption  on  that  point.  His  heroic  labors  and  his 
exposure  to  every  form  of  peril  and  violence  did  not  prevent 
his  living  with  unimpaired  vigor  of  mind  to  the  age  of 
ninety-two.  In  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  he 
crossed  the  ocean  at  least  a  dozen  times  on  errands  to  the 
Court  of  Spain,  to  seek  for  help  in  his  kindly  projects  and 
to  thwart  the  wiles  of  his  enemies. 

The  learned  and  famous  Dr.  Juan  Sepulveda,  correspond- 
ent of  Erasmus  and  Cardinal  Pole,  and  historiographer  to  the 
Emperor  Charles  V.,  appeared  as  the  leading  opponent  of 
Las  Casas.  He  wrote  a  treatise  —  "  Democrates  Secundus, 
sive  de  Justis  Belli  Causis  " — maintaining  the  right  of  the 
Pope,  as  the  vicegerent  of  Christ,  and  under  him  that  of 
the  kings  of  Spain,  to  make  a  conquest  of  the  New  World, 
and  subjects  of  its  inhabitants,  for  the  purpose  of  their 
conversion. 

In  1550  the  Emperor  convoked  a  junta  of  theologians 
and  others  of  the  learned,  to  meet  at  Valladolid  and  debate 
the  high  and  serious  theme.  The  Council  of  the  affairs  of 
the  Indies  were  present,  and  the  junta  made  up  fourteen 
persons.  Sepulveda  made  his  argument,  and  Las  Casas  re- 
plied, taking  five  days  to  read  the  substance  of  his  treatise, 
called  "  Historia  Apologetica." 

The  lawfulness  of  a  war  of  Conquest  against  the  natives 
of  the  New  World  (the  conquest,  of  course,  involving  the 
obligation  of  conversion)  was  maintained  by  Sepulveda 
substantially  on  these  four  grounds  :  — 

1.  The  grievous  sinfulness  of  the  Indians  as  idolaters, 
and  against  their  own  nature  and  the  light  of  Nature. 


56  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND    INVADERS. 

2.  Their  barbarousness,  which  made  it  proper  and  neces- 
sary that  they  should  serve  a  refined  people. 

3.  They  must  be  subjugated  in  order  that  they  might  be 
brought  under  the  True  Faith. 

4.  The  weak  among  them  needed  protection  from  the 
cruelties  of  the  strong,  in  cannibalism,  and  in  being  sacri- 
ficed to  false  gods.     Sepulveda  argued  that  more  victims 
were  sacrificed  to  the  idols  than  fell  in  war, — which  state- 
ment was  doubtless  false. 

If  the  sort  of  Christianity  which  our  age  at  least  believes 
in,  as  "  full  of  mercy  and  of  good  fruits,"  was  what  was  to 
follow  on  such  a  conquest  of  idolatrous  barbarians,  these 
reasons  would  not  have  been  without  weight.  The  authority 
of  Scripture  adduced  by  Sepulveda  was  from  Deuter.  xx. 
10-15.  Las  Casas  went  deep  in  his  final  plea  when  he 
urged,  in  answer,  that  the  cruel  deeds  related  in  the  Jew- 
ish Scriptures  were  set  before  us  "  to  be  marvelled  at  and 
not  imitated."1  He  also  affirmed,  as  from  his  own  experi- 
ence, that  the  work  of  conversion  was  better  advanced  by 
the  gentle  ways  of  peace  and  mercy  than  by  the  rage  and 
havoc  of  war,  especially  with  such  mild  and  childlike  na- 
tives.  The  apostle  of  love  had  to  speak  cautiously,  with 
ecclesiastics  before  him  and  the  Inquisition  behind  him, 
when  he  impugned  the  well-recognized  assumption  by  the 
Church  of  the  lawfulness  of  using  force  and  cruelty  in  the 
interest  of  the  true  faith.  As  to  the  rights  of  the  monarchs 
of  Spain  over  u  the  Indies,"  he  nobly  pleaded  that  these  were 

1  This  single  sentence,  coming  from  the  ingenuity  of  the  gentle  heart  of 
Las  Casas,  puts  him  two  centuries  in  advance  of  his  own  age  as  a  rationalizing 
interpreter  of  the  Scriptures.  It  was  a  bold  interpolation  of  his  own  to  throw 
into  the  Hebrew  text  the  suggestion  that  it  was  written  to  amaze,  rather  than 
to  guide,  subsequent  generations.  Sepulveda  was  right  in  his  interpretation 
of  the  text  for  those  who  believed  in  its  divine,  infallible  authority.  All 
the  reason  which  sustained  it  as  first  used,  applied  to  all  like  cases  after- 
wards. The  text,  with  inferences  from  it,  as  divine  teaching — as  also  many 
other  texts,  especially  this:  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live"  —  was 
ample  warrant  to  many  denominations  of  Christians  in  persecuting  and  cruel 
proceedings. 


RAPACITY   AND   RELIGIOUS   ZEAL.  57 

not  the  rights  of  mere  tyrants  because  of  physical  strength 
and  military  power,  but  rights  as  Christians  to  do  the  na- 
tives good  and  to  promote  good  government  among  them, 
especially  after  having  drawn  so  much  treasure  from  them. 
Las  Casas,  then  seventy-six  years  of  age,  was  judged  to  have 
gained  the  moral  victory ;  but  the  decision  of  the  Junta  was 
against  him,  though  with  a  halting  earnestness,  as  the  mon- 
arch only  forbade  the  circulation  of  Sepulveda's  book  in 
Mexico  or  the  Indies.  Some  of  the  writings  of  Las  Casas 
remain  to  this  day  in  manuscript,  under  a  jealous  ecclesias- 
tical guardianship,  accessible  only  to  the  privileged.  In- 
deed, he  himself  appears  to  have  directed  such  restrictions. 
Enough,  however,  is  known  of  their  revelations  to  explain 
their  suppression. 

Some  of  the  nuggets  and  dust  of  gold  which  Columbus 
took  back  with  him  on  his  first  homeward  voyage  were  made 
into  a  sacramental  vessel  for  the  "  Host."  The  proportion  of 
the  coveted  precious  metal  thus  put  to  a  consecrated  use, 
compared  to  the  freights  of  galleons  and  bullion-ships  after- 
wards turned  to  the  riot  of  rapacity  and  luxury,  may  fairly 
be  taken  as  significant  of  the  relations  between  the  avowed 
missionary  intent  of  the  great  enterprise  of  discovery  and 
the  direful  spirit  of  remorseless  inhumanity  in  dealing  with 
the  natives  of  the  new-found  continent  and  islands.  Of  the 
nine  of  those  natives  whom  Columbus  carried  to  Barcelona, 
two  youths  received  in  baptism  the  names  of  Ferdinand  and 
Prince  John,  his  son,  who  stood  as  their  sponsors.  The 
others  were  sent  to  Seville  for  a  Christian  education,  that 
they  might  return  as  missionaries  to  their  own  people. 
Twelve  priests  were  transported  for  the  same  purpose,  the 
noble  Las  Casas  after  his  ordinatien,  following  as  the  best 
of  them.  In  the  royal  instructions,  dictated  by  the  gentle 
heart  of  Isabella,  the  welfare  and  blessing  of  the  natives 
were  declared  to  be  the  main  object  of  all  the  further  efforts 
of  Columbus.  He  was  strictly  charged  to  treat  them  ten- 
derly and  lovingly,  to  deal  with  severity  with  any  who  might 


58  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS  AND  INVADERS. 

wrong  them,  and  to  convey  to  them  the  rich  gifts  sent  to 
them  by  the  sovereigns. 

The  first  greeting  between  the  people  of  the  Old  and 
the  New  World,  the  white  men  and  the  red  men,  was 
exchanged  by  a  company  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  rude 
and  rebellious  sailors,  on  the  three  small  vessels  of  Colum- 
bus. The  second  company  of  adventurers  embraced  at 
least  fifteen  hundred,  on  seventeen  vessels.  Many  of  them 
were  nobles  and  gentlemen ;  but  these  qualities  do  not 
imply  the  obligation  of  any  higher  restraint  upon  the  pas- 
sions of  greed  and  cruelty,  as  the  titles  borne  by  Spanish 
grandees  answered  on  the  roll  of  honor  only  to  a  scale  of 
degrees  in  rapacity,  license,  and  immunity.  The  defini- 
tion of  the  term  "  hidalgo  "  is  said  to  be,  "  a  son  of  some- 
body," —  not,  however,  in  the  general  sense  that  every 
human  being  has  had  a  paternity,  but  that  that  somebody 
had  a  name. 

When  the  zeal  and  rapacity  of  Spanish  hidalgos  and 
great  captains  were  stirred  to  a  fever  glow  for  further 
discovery  and  conquest  of  the  Indies,  the  King  Fernan- 
do and  his  daughter  Juana,  Queen  of  Castile  and  Leon, 
sought  vainly  to  extend,  by  some  show  of  responsibility, 
the  semblance  of  humanity  towards  the  wretched  natives. 
The  work  of  tyranny  and  devastation,  which  had  begun  at 
the  islands,  was  now  rapidly  extended  to  the  mainland, 
in  the  region  where  the  northern  and  southern  portions  of 
the  continent  were  united  between  the  two  great  oceans. 
Vasco  Nunez,  on  a  predatory  excursion  from  the  Isthmus 
of  Darien,  had  in  September,  1513,  climbed  alone  a  moun- 
tain height,  from  which,  so  far  as  we  know,  he  the  first 
of  all  Europeans  looked  out  upon  the  so-called  South  Sea, 
—  the  vast  expanse  of  the  Pacific,  which  takes  in  more 
than  half  the  surface  of  the  globe.  The  sublime  and  awing 
spectacle  moved  him  to  prostrate  devotion  and  prayer  by 
himself.  He  then  summoned  his  followers  to  the  same 
ecstasy  of  amazement,  and  to  lift  with  him  the  Te  Deum. 


THE  "REQUISITION."  59 

Afterward,  reaching  the  sea  at  the  Bay  of  San  Miguel,  he 
waded  into  the  water,  with  sword  and  shield,  and  took  pos- 
session of  the  whole  ocean,  with  its  islands,  for  the  kings 
of  Castile.  To  this  noble  and  heroic  Spaniard  rightly  ac- 
crued the  glory,  in  1516,  of  launching  two  well-equipped 
barks  from  the  river  Balsas, —  the  first  keels  of  European 
navigators  to  plough  the  waters  of  the  Pacific.  And  the 
feat  which  preceded  this  triumph  was  in  full  keeping  with 
it ;  for  the  timber  of  the  vessels  had  been  cut  and  framed 
on  the  Atlantic  side  of  the  continent,  and  the  rigging  and 
equipments  had  been  transported  with  it  by  Spaniards, 
negroes,  and  Indians,  with  incredible  toil,  over  the  rough 
mountains  and  the  oozy  soil  of  the  isthmus. 

The  work  of  further  conquest  was,  by  royal  and  ecclesi- 
astical instructions,  to  proceed  under  the  guidance  of  a 
proclamation,  which  may  safely  be  called  the  most  extraor- 
dinary state  document  ever  penned.  Its  whole  purport, 
terms,  and  spirit  are  so  astounding  in  the  assumptions  and 
in  the  impossible  conditions  which  it  involved,  as  well  as  in 
the  utter  futility  of  its  proffers  of  humanity  to  the  Indians, 
that  it  would  provoke  the  ridicule  and  derision  of  readers 
of  these  days  as  if  it  were  a  comic  travesty,  did  it  not  deal 
with  such  profoundly  momentous  matters.  This  document, 
in  the  form  of  instructions  to  the  viceroys  in  the  Indies, 
was  prepared  by  a  learned  Spanish  jurist,  and  bears  the 
Latin  title  of  "  The  Requisition."  It  was  to  be  read  as 
a  proclamation,  or  a  herald's  announcement,  by  the  com- 
mander as  he  invaded  each  Indian  province  for  conquest, 
—  an  exception  dispensing  with  this  when  the  natives  were 
supposed  to  be  so-called  cannibals.  It  recited  the  Bible 
narrative  of  the  creation  by  God  of  the  human  pair;  the 
unity  and  the  dispersion  of  the  race ;  the  lordship  over  this 
whole  race  and  over  all  the  earth,  which  the  Almighty  had 
given  to  St.  Peter,  and  then  to  his  successors  the  popes ; 
the  donation  made  by  the  reigning  pontiff  of  lordship  over 
all  the  Indies  to  the  monarchs  of  Spain ;  and  it  called 


60  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

upon  the  natives  to  follow  the  whole  civilized  world  in 
paying  obedience  to  and  seeking  the  protection  of  the 
Church.  If  the  natives  comply  with  this  appeal,  they  and 
their  lands  shall  be  secure,  and  they  shall  have  "  many 
privileges  and  exemptions  "  !  If  they  refuse,  robbery  and 
devastation  shall  spoil  all  their  possessions,  and  they  them- 
selves will  be  enslaved  or  killed. 

A  marvellously  strange  document  indeed !  It  was  to  be 
read  by  mail-clad  and  mounted  warriors,  with  their  blood- 
hounds, to  naked,  unarmed  savages.  Who  was  to  interpret 
to  them  its  theology,  its  Bible  terms,  its  ecclesiastical  as- 
sumptions and  stibtilties,  and  the  reasons  justifying  its 
alternative  of  conditions  ?  This  document  is  said  to  have 
been  first  read  by  the  friars  in  the  train  of  Ojeda,  in  his 
attack  on  the  savages  of  Carthagena. l 

Furnished  with  this  "  Requisition,"  the  great  captain 
Pedrarias,  Governor  of  Darien,  with  a  strong  armament, 
started  on  his  "  consecrated  "  enterprise.  The  sickening 
story  is  too  harrowing  and  revolting  for  relation  in  all  its 
dark  and  hideous  details.  No  element  of  treachery,  in- 
gratitude, ferocity,  rapacity,  or  fiendishness  is  lacking  in 
it.  The  torture,  the  fire,  and  the  fangs  of  blood-hounds 
were  put  into  service  to  extort  the  secret  of  treasures  of 
gold  and  pearls;  and  thousands  and  thousands  of  men, 
women,  and  children,  whom  the  "  Requisition  "  had  pro- 
nounced members  of  God's  one  human  family,  were  treated 
with  a  pitiless  barbarity  at  which  the  heart  shudders. 
The  only  palliating  thought  which  offers  itself,  as  we  read 
the  story,  is  that  the  Spanish  invaders,  themselves  but  par- 
tially civilized,  and  with  but  a  mockery  of  Christianity 
as  their  religion,  became  actually  dehumanized  and  bru- 
talized by  the  scenes  and  experiences  around  them,  by 
a  homeless  and  hazardous  life  on  sea  and  land,  under  a 
burning  sun,  amid  swamps  and  exposures,  often  starving, 

1  Irving,  who  gives  it  in  full  in  his  Appendix  of  Documents,  "  Columbus," 
vol.  ii.,  applies  to  it  the  designation,  of  a  "  curious  manifesto." 


THE   NATIVES   AS   DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS.  61 

always  lashed  and  maddened  by  the  greed  of  gold  and 
plunder.  And  if  anything  had  been  lacking  to  fill  out  the 
farcical  absurdity  and  the  comic  drollery  of  the  ."  Requi- 
sition," it  is  found  in  the  fact,  that,  so  far  from  an  attempt 
being  made  by  any  preparatory  warning  to  interpret  it 
or  to  convey  its  significance  to  a  threatened  and  doomed 
Indian  chieftain,  the  invaders,  planning  secret  midnight 
attacks  on  the  unsuspecting  natives,  would  go  through  the 
form  of  mumbling  over  the  jumble  of  theology  and  non- 
sense as  they  were  hiding  in  the  woods,  all  by  themselves. 

And  this  grimly  comic  element  in  the  affair  seems  to  have 
been  appreciated,  on  one  occasion  at  least,  by  two  caciques 
of  the  province  of  Cenu,  when  the  paper  was  in  substance 
communicated  to  them  by  an  invading  captain,— the  lawyer 
Enciso.  The  chiefs  assented  to  what  was  said  about  the 
one  supreme  God,  the  Creator  and  Lord  of  all  things ;  but 
"  as  to  what  was  said  about  the  Pope  being  lord  of  all 
the  universe  in  the  place  of  God,  and  of  his  giving  the 
land  of  the  Indies  to  the  King  of  Castile,  the  Pope  must 
have  been  drunk  when  he  did  it,  for  he  gave  what  was  not 
his  ;  and  that  the  king  who  had  asked  such  a  gift  must  be 
a  madman  in  asking  for  what  belonged  to  others."  They 
added,  that  if  he  wanted  the  land  he  must  come  and  take 
it,  and  they  would  put  his  head  on  a  stake.  An  aggrava- 
tion of  the  superstitious  frenzy  against  the  poor  heathen 
was  found  in  the  surmise  that  they  actually  worshipped  the 
Devil.  On  the  return  of  Columbus  from  his  second  voy- 
age, in  1493,  he  had  in  his  train  some  fancifully  bedizened 
native  chiefs,  on  whose  head-gear  and  belts  were  wrought 
figures  and  grotesque  emblems,  some  of  which  were  re- 
garded as  showing  the  Devil  in  his  own  proper  likeness, 
others  as  in  the  guise  of  a  cat  or  owl.  Even  the  good 
friend  of  Columbus,  the  curate  Bernaldez,  interpreted  the 
symbols  as  those  under  which  their  uncanny  deity  .appeared 
to  them  visibly. 

In.  the  interest  of  the  claims  of  the  Roman  Church  to  a 


62  SPANISH  DISCOVERERS  AND   INVADERS. 

heritage  on  this  continent,  an  article  by  the  Paulist  Father 
Hecker  in  the  "  Catholic  World,"  for  July,  1879,  makes 
the  following  statement :  — 

"  The  discovery  of  the  western  continent  was  eminently  a  reli- 
gious enterprise.  The  motive  which  animated  Columbus,  in  com- 
mon with  the  Franciscan  prior  (his  patron  Perez)  and  Isabella 
the  Catholic,  was  the  burning  desire  to  carry  the  blessings  of  the 
Christian  faith  to  the  inhabitants  of  a  new  continent ;  and  it  was 
the  inspiration  of  this  idea  which  brought  a  new  world  to  light. 
Sometimes  missionaries  were  slain,  but  the  fearless  soldiers  of  the 
cross  continued  unceasingly  their  work  of  converting  the  natives 
and  bringing  them  into  the  fold  of  Christ." 

Strangely  enough  do  such  sentences  of  a  modern  convert 
read,  as  a  comment  upon  the  actual  deeds  of  the  Spanish 
crusaders,  as  related  exclusively  by  Catholic  writers. 

When  Columbus  sailed  in  the  spring  of  1498,  on  his 
third  voyage,  the  disasters  and  discontents  which  had  been 
thoroughly  reported  in  Spain  as  having  visited  their  miser- 
ies on  the  island  colony,  had  substituted  disgust  for  the 
former  enthusiasm  for  sharing  in  the  enterprise.  The  Ad- 
miral himself  proposed  that  his  new  complement  of  men 
should  be  largely  composed  of  convicts.  Bitterly  did  he 
and  the  natives  rue  this  experiment  of  the  importation  of 
men  some  of  whom  had  judicially  lost  their  ears. 

It  was  with  such  material  on  his  arrival  at  Hispaniola, 
where  he  found  a  full  riot  of  mutiny  and  disorder,  that 
Columbus  had  recourse  to  the  system  of  repartimientos,  — 
a  device  which  quickened  and  instigated  many  new  forms 
of  barbarous  iniquity  against  the  natives.  This  system  was 
one  by  which  vast  tracts  of  land  were  assigned  to  the  most 
desperate  in  their  revolt,  with  the  right  to  compel  the  labor 
of  bands  of  the  natives.  One  Spaniard  thus  became  the 
irresponsible  and  arbitrary  master  of,  it  might  be,  hundreds 
of  natives.  These,  of  course,  were  but  slaves.  They  had 
never  needed  and  had  never  used  anything  answering  to 
what  we  call  bodily  labor,  or  task-work,  as  their  generous 


ENSLAVING   OP  THE  NATIVES.  63 

and  luxuriant  groves  and  fields  teemed  with  all  that  was 
requisite  for  their  subsistence.  Under  the  mastery  and  the 
goading  of  the  Spaniard  they  bent  their  backs  to  digging  in 
the  mines,  to  tillage  in  the  fields  to  supply  a  wasteful  indul- 
gence, and  to  the  carrying  of  heavy  burdens.  As  retain- 
ers of  their  oppressors  they  were  also  trained  to  warfare, 
and  bound  to  do  a  hateful  service  in  raids  against  their  own 
former  friendly  fellows. 

Mr.  Parkman a  rightly  says  that  the  spirit  of  Spanish  en- 
terprise in  America  is  expressed  in  the  following  address 
of  Dr.  Pedro  de  Santander,  to  the  King,  in  1557,  of  the 
expedition  of  De  Soto:  — 

"  It  is  lawful  that  your  Majesty,  like  a  good  shepherd,  appointed 
by  the  hand  of  the  Eternal  Father,  should  tend  and  lead  out  your 
sheep,  since  the  Holy  Spirit  has  shown  spreading  pastures  where- 
on are  feeding  lost  sheep,  which  have  been  snatched  away  by  the 
dragon,  the  Demon.  These  pastures  are  the  New  World,  wherein 
is  comprised  Florida,  now  in  possession  of  the  Demon  ;  and  here  he 
makes  himself  adored  and  revered.  This  is  the  Land  of  Promise 
possessed  by  idolaters,  the  Amorite,  Amalekite,  Moabite,  Canaan- 
ite.  This  is  the  land  promised  by  the  Eternal  Father  to  the  Faith- 
ful, since  we  are  commanded  by  God  in  the  Holy  Scriptures  to 
take  it  from  them,  being  idolaters,  and,  by  reason  of  their  idolatry 
and  sin,  to  put  them  all  to  the  knife,  leaving  no  living  thing  save 
maidens  and  children,  their  cities  robbed  and  sacked,  their  walls  and 
houses  levelled  to  the  earth." 

The  writer,  however,  leaves  open  the  opportunity  for 
securing  many  slaves.  In  pleadings  like  this,  no  previous 
measure  or  limitation  of  effort  or  time  is  indicated  for 
attempts  at  conversion,  and  we  are  left  to  infer  that  the 
supposed  futility  of  them  warranted  anticipating  them  by 
death,  and  so  making  the  doom  of  the  heathen  sure. 

In  accordance  with  that  rule  of  equity  and  reason  which 
enjoins,  that,  when  we  judge  or  rehearse  the  actions  and 
methods  of  men  of  other  generations  and  circumstances 

1  Pioneers  of  France,  p.  13. 


64  SPANISH  DISCOVERERS  AND  INVADERS. 

and  creeds,  we  should  set  them  in  their  own  time  and 
accept  the  sincerity  of  their  believing  or  purposing  in 
qualification  of  our  condemnation  of  them,  we  must  allow 
even  the  bloody  devastators  of  the  New  World  to  explain 
to  us  their  convictions  and  motives.  Their  age  was  one  in 
which  the  Church  which  represented  Christianity  was  most 
lofty  and  unchallenged  in  its  claims,  most  ruthless  in  the 
sweep  of  its  pretensions,  and  most  utterly  destitute  and  un- 
conscious in  its  appreciation  of  the  spirit  of  the  gospel. 
A  heathen  was  a  child  of  the  Devil,  not  of  God ;  his  certain 
and  everlasting  doom  was  in  the  pit  of  torments ;  he  had 
no  rights  here  or  hereafter.  The  Christian,  sure  of  heaven 
as  he  was,  was  all  the  more  a  rightful  claimant  to  the  earth 
and  everything  upon  it ;  his  own  blessed  lot  and  privilege  in- 
volved no  obligation  of  pity  or  mercy  for  the  heathen.  The 
Spaniards  —  from  their  monarch  down  to  the  humblest  of 
their  colonists  —  never  made  purchase  of  or  paid  price  for 
a  single  foot  of  land  on  our  continent  or  islands  as  Pro- 
testants did,  whatever  may  have  been  the  fairness  or  the 
meanness  of  their  bargains.  The  right  of  conquest  was 
supreme  for  the  invaders :  the  opportunity  of  baptism  was 
full  payment  to  the  natives.  Conquest  of  heathendom  and 
heathens  was  something  even  more  sacred  than  a  right: 
it  was  transcendently  a  solemn  duty.  "  The  earth  is  the 
Lord's;"  He'  is  its  rightful  owner,  ruler,  and  disposer;  the 
Pope  is  His  vicegerent ;  the  children  of  the  one  fold  are  his 
champions.  True,  the  heathen  whom  the  Spaniards  en- 
countered were  idolaters,  and  some  of  them  were  believed 
to  offer  human  sacrifices ;  the  invaders  frequently  saw 
the  mutilated  remains  of  victims  from  those  foul  altars.1 
Speaking  of  the  brutish  superstitions  and  the  human  sacri- 
fices found  among  the  Aztecs,  Prescott  adds  these  words : 
"The  debasing  institutions  of  the  Aztecs  furnish  the  best 

1  It  has  been  charitably  suggested  that  limbs  and  other  fragments  of  hu- 
man bodies  seen  in  some  of  the  native  cabins  may  have  been  the  remains  of 
relatives  intended  for  affectionate  preservation. 


CRUEL  DEALING  WITH   THE  NATIVES.  65 

apology  for  their  conquest."     Popocatapetl  yielded  its  sul- 
phur to  Cortes  in  replenishing  his  ammunition. 

But  it  does  not  appear  that  any  deepening  shade  of  the 
state  of  heathenism  heightened  in  the  breast  of  a  child 
of  the  Church  the  right  or  duty  of  conquest.     There  could 
be  no  worse  state  than  that  of  a  heathen ;  no  greater,  no 
less  degree  in  his  condemnation.     Every  infliction,  horror, 
or  agony  visited  upon  his  body  was  a  stretch  and  an  in- 
genuity of  mercy  to  him,  because  intended  (even  if  not 
effectual)  for  the  saving  of  his  soul.     If  he  could  only  be 
baptized  before  he  died,  he  owed  an  unspeakable  debt  to 
any  one   who,  by  whatever   cruelty,  terminated  his  life. 
But  if  after  all  this  cruelty  he  died  unbaptized,  that  was 
his  misfortune.     The  history  of  Spanish  discovery,  explora- 
tion, and  colonization,  so  far  as  it  concerns  the  relations 
of  the  invaders  with  the  natives,  is  at  every  stage  of  it 
marked  by  ruthless  and  atrocious   cruelties,  by  outrages 
and  enormities  of  iniquity,  over  the  perusal  of  which  the 
heart  sickens.     Those  who  crave  a  knowledge  of  them  in 
the  detail  must  seek  it  in  the  too  faithful  —  we  can  hardly, 
in  this  connection,  use   the   pure   terms  "truthful"  and 
"candid" — historical  narratives.     There  is  no  good  use 
to  come  of   the  rehearsal  of  them.      One  whose  painful 
task  has  required  of  him  to  trace  in  the  records  that  story 
of  torturous   horror,  can   hardly  fail  to  wish  that  those 
records  had  never  been  written,  or  that  they  had  perished, 
had  lost  their  awful  skill  of  forever  perpetuating  the  story 
of  man's  inhumanity  to  man,  and  had  become  as  mute  as 
the  heart-pangs  and  the  once  quivering  nerves  of  the  vic- 
tims that  have  been  resolved  into  peaceftil  dust.     Indeed, 
so  faithfully  was  the  curious  skill  of  the  graver  engaged  to 
illustrate  the  brutal  enormities  of  these  conquests,  that, 
without  reading  a  line  of  the  text  of  many  of  these  vol- 
umes, one  may  learn  more  than  he  craves  of  their  contents 
simply  from  their  illustrations. 

After  reading  those  sweet  words  and  phrases  in  which 

5 


66  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

Columbus  portrays  to  their  Majesties  the  gentle  and  kindly 
creatures  who  welcomed  the  mysterious  white  visitors  to 
their  island  shores,  it  is  but  a  long  and  varied  racking 
of  all  our  sensibilities  to  follow  the  course  of  the  invaders. 
There  was  no  possible  deed,  or  trick,  or  artifice  of  bar- 
barity, ingratitude,  treachery,  and  cunning  and  despicable 
fraud,  which  the  invaders  scrupled  to  practise  on  those 
nude  and  simple  children  of  Nature.  Steel-clad  warriors, 
a  single  score  of  them,  would  overmatch  thousands  of  those 
poor  savages  when  they  were  driven  to  any  show  of  re- 
sistance. The  horse  on  which  the  warrior  was  mounted 
was  to  the  Indian  a  more  terrific  monster  than  Milton  has 
fashioned  from  all  the  shapes  of  demons  for  his  hellish 
phalanxes  ;  and  it  was  the  horse,  not  the  man  upon  it, 
which  secured  to  Cortes  the  conquest  of  Mexico.  The 
fierce  Spanish  blood-hound,  also,  comes  into  the  horrid 
warfare  to  track  the  wretched  victims  of  greed  through  the 
swamps  and  mountain  thickets.  The  only  gleam  of  mercy, 
the  only  arresting  hush  from  agony,  that  relieves  the  later 
narratives,  is  when  we  come  for  moments  upon  the  men- 
tion of  the  name  of  Las  Casas,  the  great  Spanish  apostle 
of  the  Indians,  with  his  rebuking  word. 

If,  amid  the  horrors  and  atrocities  connected  with  the 
successive  Spanish  conquests  on  our  islands  and  continent, 
anything  could  add  a  sharper  and  more  distressing  outrage 
to  the  story,  this  would  be  found  in  the  apparently  utter 
insensibility  to  their  own  cruelty  and  irreverence  in  which 
the  Spaniards  attached  the  holiest  names  and  epithets  to 
the  places  where  their  acts  were  often  the  most  fiendish,  — 
names  borne  by  many  of  those  places  to  this  day.  The 
sacred  title  of  the  Trinity ;  the  names  of  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Spirit ;  the  sweet  roll  of  epithets  —  of  love,  pity, 
mercy,  and  sorrow  —  for  the  Virgin  Mother ;  the  names 
of  prophets,  apostles,  and  evangelists,  of  saints  and  mar- 
tyrs, of  holy  days  and  sacraments,  —  are  strewn  all  over 
the  islands,  bays,  coasts,  and  rivers  of  our  southern  conti- 


SHIP-LOADS   OF   SLAVES   TRANSPORTED.  67 

nent,  and  generally  there  is  with  them  a  frightful  legend. 
Columbus,  writing  to  the  monarchs  in  1498,  estimates  that, 
"  in  the  name  of  the  sacred  Trinity,"  the  Spanish  markets 
may  be  supplied  with  such  and  such  numbers  of  slaves. 
Las  Casas  writes  that  on  one  occasion  the  Spaniards  hanged 
thirteen  Indians  "  in  honor  and  reverence  of  Christ,  our 
Lord,  and  his  twelve  apostles."  After  a  dire  slaughter 
of  the  Indians,  in  his  first  encounter  with  them  at  Tabasco, 
Cortes  enjoined  a  solemn  religious  ceremonial,  with  cross 
and  chant  and  mass  and  Te  Deum,  and  named  the  bloody 
spot  "Saint  Mary  of  Victory."  He  wrote  that  the  odds 
had  been  so  immense  against  him  "  that  Heaven  must  have 
fought  on  his  side."  Las  Casas  dryly  adds,  that  "  this  was 
the  first  preaching  of  the  gospel  by  Cortes  in  New  Spain." 
Columbus,  with  all  his  nobleness  of  soul,  has  left  no  exam- 
ple set  by  him,  and  no  protest,  for  withstanding  or  rebuking 
the  spirit  of  his  countrymen.  On  the  contrary,  his  own 
leading  and  example  marked  the  course  followed  by  his 
sons  and  all  his  successors, —  Ovando,  Ojeda,  Nicuesa,  En- 
ciso,  Vasco  Nunez,  Pedrarias,  Pizarro,  and  Cortes.  Ojeda 
always  wore,  concealed  on  his  person,  an  amulet  or  charm 
of  the  Holy  Virgin,  which  he  firmly  believed  was  his  infal- 
lible protection  under  all  risks  on  sea  and  land,  in  private 
brawls  and  desperate  battles.  On  his  first  return  voyage 
Columbus,  as  has  been  mentioned,  took  home  with  him,  as 
the  first-fruits  of  a  new  slave  race,  nine  Indians.  They 
were  compensated  by  being  secured  against  future  woe  by 
Christian  baptism.  One  of  them  dying  soon  after  the  cere- 
mony was,  we  are  told,  "  the  first  of  his  race  to  enter 
heaven."  On  various  pretences  Columbus  sent  to  Spain 
many  ship-loads  of  slaves.  It  was  only  on  the  third  of  his 
four  voyages,  in  1498,  that  he  touched  the  mainland  of 
the  continent,  at  Paria,  near  the  Isthmus  of  Darien  ;  and 
then  followed  in  succession  the  work  of  so-called  discovery, 
which  opened  either  division  of  the  continent  to  the  same 
worse  than  barbarous  havoc  of  rapacity  and  fiendishness. 


68  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

Mines  of  the  precious  metals,  gems  and  pearls  —  even 
more  than  food  and  water  when  they  were  on  the  edge  of 
death  —  were  the  consuming  cravings  of  the  Spaniard.  If 
a  single  token  of  such  treasure  was  seen  to  sparkle  or  to 
gleam  on  the  person  of  a  savage,  the  secret  of  its  source 
must  be  wrung  from  him ;  he  must  point  the  way  to  the 
mine ;  he  must  toil  there  to  work  it.  Visions  floated  be- 
fore the  dreams  of  the  invaders  of  spots  where  the  soil 
was  made  of  virgin  gold  and  silver,  of  palaces  built  of 
those  metals,  of  kitchen  utensils  and  working  tools  fash- 
ioned from  them.  The  poor  natives,  in  their  desperation, 
over  and  over  again  intermitted  their  simple  husbandry 
on  their  own  soil,  in  their  own  support,  with  the  childish 
thought  that  they  could  starve  the  Spaniards  and  compel 
them  to  go  home.  There  is  an  element  of  confusion  in  the 
history,  for  all  modern  readers,  in  the  number  of  Span- 
ish officials,  with  long,  hard,  high-sounding  titles,  among 
whom  were  distributed  inconsistent  functions,  rival  pre- 
rogatives of  place  and  jurisdiction,  with  their  jealousies, 
each  having  his  partisans  before  the  Council  of  the  Indies 
and  at  the  Spanish  court.  And  these  were  not  only 
haughty  grandees  and  hidalgos,  but  adventurers  of  an 
ordinary  type,  from  a  land  in  which  even  the  peasants 
had  the  spirit  and  port  of  gentlemen.  Yet  to  relieve,  if 
possible,  this  dismal  justification  of  the  right  and  duty  of 
the  conquest  of  the  heathen,  we  must  make  emphatic  the 
verbal  statement,  —  and,  our  charity  must  add,  the  intent, 
—  that  conversion  to  the  true  faith  and  fold  must  be  the 
accompaniment  and  crown  of  conquest.  If  the  heathen 
should  perish  by  the  million  in  the  savagery  of  the  pro- 
cess which  was  designed  for  their  conversion,  this  acci- 
dent did  not  prejudice  the  Tightness  and  holiness  of  the 
intent.  The  conquerors  meant  to  impart  to  the  poor  be- 
nighted creatures  an  unspeakable  deliverance  and  bless- 
ing ;  but  Satan  had  the  start  of  them,  and  claimed  his 
own.  When,  after  an  atrocious  course  of  rapine,  treach- 


THE   STRONG   AGAINST   THE   WEAK.  69 

ery,  and  ferocity  by  the  invaders,  the  Inca  Atalmalpa 
was  in  the  power  of  the  Spaniards,  his  sentence  was  to 
be  brought  to  death  by  fire.  This  was  mercifully  com- 
muted to  death  by  the  bowstring,  on  the  victim's  con- 
senting to  be  baptized. 

To  be  baptized!  In  the  —  devout  shall  we  call  it? — con- 
viction of  priest  and  believer,  baptism  signified  conversion. 
True,  men  cannot  impart  what  they  have  not  themselves ; 
and  as  baptism  was  about  the  whole  of  Christianity  of 
which  the  ruthless  invaders  had  the  knowledge  or  the 
advantage,  the  rite  signified  the  imparting  the  full  benefit 
of  the  gospel  of  Christ  to  the  heathen,  as  it  did  to  those 
born  in  a  Christian  land. 

In  closing  this  rehearsal  of  the  tragic  and  hideous  story 
of  the  first  opening  of  intercourse  by  Europeans,  as  repre- 
sented by  the  Spaniards,  with  the  natives  of  this  continent, 
it  would  be  a  relief  if  a  single  gleam  of  light  or  mercy 
could  be  thrown  across  the  distressing  narrative.  Our 
authorities  are  exclusively  Spanish  writers,  many  of  them 
ecclesiastics.  There  is  a  series  of  similar  relations  await- 
ing our  review,  all  of  them  stained  with  wrong  and  cruelty ; 
and  those  of  them  which  are  associated  with  Puritan  sav- 
agery, and  even  with  the  perfidy  and  meanness  of  our  own 
republican  Government,  have  many  points  of  likeness  to 
that  which  we  have  been  reading.  Nor  do  such  harrowing 
episodes  in  history  stand  alone  by  themselves,  or  throw 
their  shadows  only  over  ages  that  are  past.  The  brutal 
oppression  of  the  weak  by  the  strong  finds  its  most  signal 
illustrations  in  the  annals  of  so-called  Christian  nations. 
Great  Britain  up  to  our  own  time,  substituting  the  claims 
of  civilization  and  of  free  intercourse  for  trade  for  those 
which  the  Spaniards  advanced  for  the  "  holy  faith,"  has 
committed  like  atrocities  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe. 
Every  feeble  people  and  race,  with  degrees  of  civilization 
or  barbarism,  has  had  to  yield  to  her  compulsion  for  in- 
tercourse beyond  their  own  wish  and  need ;  and  she  has 


70  SPANISH    DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

scoured  the  seas  and  penetrated  deserts  to  find  victims 
of  her  mania  for  civilizing  the  world.  But  the  Spaniards, 
as  they  were  the  first  in  the  wrong,  so  they  were  beyond 
all  approach  of  rivalry  in  the  sum  and  method  of  their  de- 
vastating and  aimless  havoc  of  frenzied  and  satanic  passion 
against  the  least  warlike  and  the  most  inoffensive  of  all  our 
native  tribes.  If  historic  fidelity  and  candor  in  the  use  of 
our  authorities  would  allow,  it  would  cheer  alike  reader  and 
writer  if  this  direful  record  of  slaughter  and  torture  of  a 
defenceless  people  had  been  at  least,  if  not  effectually,  with- 
stood by  a  steady  protest,  not  merely  from  a  single  ecclesi- 
astic, but  by  a  considerable  number  of  those  who  professed 
that  the  mainspring  of  the  enterprise  was  the  conversion  of 
the  natives.  Instead  of  this  relief,  however,  we  do  not  need 
to  pause  long  in  our  moralizing  over  the  story  to  find  that 
the  most  repulsive  and  shocking  element  in  it  is  the  per- 
sistent obtrusion,  the  even  blasphemous  reiteration,  of  a 
religious  motive  of  the  Conquest.  The  Jesuit  Father,  Char- 
levoix,  who  wrote  a  history  of  St.  Domingo  as  well  as  of 
New  France,  gives  in  the  latter  work  the  following  as  one 
of  the  motives  which  prompted  his  historical  labors  :  — 

"  I  have  resolved  to  undertake  this  work  in  the  desire  to  make 
known  the  mercies  of  the  Lord  and  the  triumph  of  religion  over 
that  small  number  of  the  elect,  predestined  before  all  ages,  amid  so 
many  savage  tribes,  which  till  the  French  entered  their  country 
had  lain  buried  in  the  thickest  darkness  of  infidelity." 1 

There  was  reason  for  this  pious  motive  on  the  part  of 
the  historian  who  had  to  relate  the  zeal,  devotion,  and  to 
themselves  the  satisfactory  and  rewarding  success  of  his 
brother  missionaries  in  New  France.  But  he  has  noth- 
ing of  the  kind  to  tell  us  of  Christian  missionaries  in  St. 
Domingo  before  the  work  of  devastation  and  depopula- 
tion had  been  completed.  The  natives  were  found  by  the 
Spaniards  in  a  peaceful,  contented,  and,  so  to  speak,  in- 

1  Charlevoix's  Kew  France,  Shea's  translation,  vol.  i.  p.  103. 


THE   DOMINICAN   FRIARS.  71 

nocent  condition.  There  were  from  the  first  some  among 
the  Spanish  invaders,  besides  ecclesiastics,  who  were  men 
of  gentle  blood  and  of  education.  They  called  themselves 
Christians.  All  their  references  to  their  "  sacred  faith," 
their  most  "  holy  church,"  are  profoundly  reverential,  and 
they  exult  over  their  privileges  as  its  children.  The  free- 
booters and  desperadoes  among  them,  even  the  worst  of 
them,  did  hold  in  dread  the  anathemas  of  the  Church. 
The  most  and  the  least  craven  of  them  shrunk  with  terror 
from  the  denial  of  its  sacraments  in  life  and  death.  Why 
was  the  Church  so  utterly  powerless  and  palsied  then,  in  the 
exercise  of  a  sway  such  as  it  has  never  had  since  that  age  ? 
True,  the  ecclesiastics  among  the  invaders  were  at  first  very 
few,  and  many  of  the  marauding  parties  may  not  have  been 
accompanied  by  a  single  ghostly  adviser.  But  those  ma- 
rauders knew,  as  did  the  priests,  that  their  terrific  creed 
doomed  the  natives  dying  unbaptized  to  an  awful  woe ;  and 
yet  they  were  not  withheld  from  a  wanton  anticipation  of 
it  by  visiting  upon  them  a  promiscuous  slaughter.  Small 
as  might  have  been  among  them  the  number  of  those  whom 
Charlevoix  calls  "  the  predestined  elect,"  there  was  no  arrest 
of  the  work  of  slaughter  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  condition  of 
baptism. 

In  1509,  Diego,  a  son  of  the  Admiral,  came  over  as  Gov- 
ernor of  St.  Domingo.  He  was  followed,  the  next  year,  by 
a  company  of  a  dozen  or  more  Dominican  friars,  earnest, 
resolute  men,  in  poverty  and  heroic  fidelity.  A  humble 
monastery  was  provided  to  shelter  them.  With  an  un- 
daunted courage  they  resolved  to  rebuke,  and  in  the  name 
of  all  that  was  just  and  holy  to  protest  against,  the  enormi- 
ties of  the  Spanish  desperadoes  and  the  whole  course  of 
cruelty  towards  the  natives.  They  put  forward  one  of  their 
number,  Brother  Antonio  Montesino,  who  in  a  Sunday  ser- 
mon addressed  a  great  crowd  of  hearers  of  the  principal 
persons  of*  St.  Domingo.  His  piercing  rebukes  and  his 
scorching  invectives,  unsparing  in  their  directness  of  ad- 


72  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS.     • 

dress  to  the  gross  culprits  before  him,  made  them  writhe 
iia  passion.  He  told  them  that  Moors  and  Turks  had  a 
chance  better  than  their  own  for  salvation.  To  their  plea 
that  they  could  not  dispense  with  the  toil  and  service  of  the 
natives  for  all  menial  and  laborious  work,  he  bade  them  to 
do  it  themselves,  with  their  own  wives  and  children.  The 
blood  of  the  Spaniards  was  maddened  by  these  "  delirious 
things"  uttered  by  the  bold  monk;  his  life  was  threatened, 
and  it  was  expected  that,  under  compulsion,  he  would  re- 
tract his  defiant  sermon  on  the  next  Sunday.  Instead  of 
doing  so,  he  but  repeated  and  intensified  his  daring  re- 
bukes, and  frankly  warned  his  hearers  that  the  Dominicans 
would  refuse  the  sacraments  to  any  who  were  guilty  of  op- 
pressing the  natives.  That  the  Church  and  its  priests  had 
a  power,  which  before  this  might  have  been  used  in  terror 
if  not  to  large  effect,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  monk 
was  unharmed ;  while  his  scathed  hearers,  the  chief  in  the 
Island,  determined  to  send  a  protest  against  his  alarming 
preaching  to  the  Spanish  monarch.  Strangely  enough  too, 
they  chose  for  the  errand  a  Franciscan  monk,  Alonzo  de 
Espinal,  while  the  Dominicans  commissioned  the  heroic 
preacher  to  represent  their  side  at  the  Court.  The  agent 
of  the  colonists  got  the  start  for  a  hearing,  found  strong 
supporters  in  his  plea  for  those  who  had  sent  him,  and  by 
his  artful  statement  of  the  danger  of  impending  ruin  to 
the  colony  he  had  induced  the  king  to  engage  the  head  of 
the  Dominican  order  in  Spain  in  a  complaint  against  the 
preacher.  It  was  only  after  meeting  and  overcoming  many 
obstacles  and  much  resistance  that  Father  Antonio  obtained 
access  and  a  hearing  at  Court.  But  his  noble  earnestness 
was  not  wholly  without  effect.  Thus  were  the  colonists 
and  the  natives  represented  by  priest  against  priest.  The 
king  took  the  usual  course  of  referring  the  controversy  to 
a  junta,  composed  of  some  of  his  council  and  of  theolo- 
gians. But  little  that  accrued  to  the  relief  or  benefit  of  the 
natives  came  from  the  conference,  from  the  measures  which 


THE  DOCTRINES  OF  HELL  AND   BAPTISM.  73 

it  recommended,  or  from  the  consequent  orders  of  the  king. 
The  natives  must  be  made  to  consent  to  be  converted ;  they 
must  work  for  their  masters  ;  they  must  be  kindly  treated, 
arid  after  a  fashion  might  receive  something  to  be  called 
wages.  The  most  grateful  result  from  the  mission  of  the 
two  priests  representing  the  two  sides  of  a  bitter  strife  was 
that  the  Dominican,  by  his  grace  and  skill  of  heart  and  zeal 
in  private  conferences,  earnest  and  continued,  completely 
won  over  to  sympathy  and  co-operation  with  him  his  Fran- 
ciscan brother. 

The  natives,  however,  had  become  thoroughly  alienated 
by  hatred  and  dread  from  the  Spaniards,  and  kept  aloof 
from  them.  What  indeed  had  these  Spaniards,  with  the 
proffer  of  their  "holy  faith,"  to  tempt  and  draw  to  them 
these  children  of  Nature  ?  What  of  help  or  blessing,  of 
human  pity  and  tenderness,  came  from  them  ?  Yet  the 
more  the  natives  shunned  their  tormentors,  and  sought  to 
keep  as  far  as  possible  from  them,  their  aversion  was  ac- 
counted as  only  an  obdurate  resistance  to  being  converted. 

When  Cortes,  in  his  second  expedition,  was  preparing 
for  his  siege  of  Montezuma's  capital,  he  issued  to  his  sol- 
diers a  paper  of  elaborate  instructions.  In  this  he  said 
"conversion"  was  the  great  aim  which  made  his  enter- 
prise a  holy  one,  and  that  "  without  it  the  war  would  be 
manifestly  unjust,  and  every  acquisition  made  by  it  a 
robbery." 

In  the  enlightenment  and  free-thinking  of  our  own  age, 
which  have  relieved  it  from  what  are  regarded  as  the 
bugbear  superstitions  and  dreads  fostered  by  the  old  priest- 
craft, there  are  many  who  will  frankly  say  that  the  easy 
method  offered  to  the  heathen  by  which  they  might  escape 
the  fearful  doom  of  hell,  was  just  as  rational  as  was  the 
teaching  them  that  they  were  really  under  such  a  doom. 
The  doctrine  of  hell,  and  the  rite  of  baptism  as  the 
symbol  of  full  salvation  from  it,  were  well  adjusted  to 
each  other, — both  being  irrational,  superstitious,  and  child- 


74  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND  INVADERS. 

ish,  the  one  offsetting  the  other.  The  natives  certainly 
had  not  the  slightest  conception  whatever  that  because 
they  were  brought  into  existence  outside  the  Christian 
fold,  or  for  any  other  reason,  they  were  all  destined  to 
endless  miseries  and  torments  hereafter ;  and  probably 
they  had  as  vague  an  appreciation  of  the  doctrine  as  they 
had  of  the  method  of  relief  from  the  fate  to  which  it  as- 
signed them. 

Roger  Williams,  in  one  of  those  flashings  of  his  keener 
insight  which  anticipated  as  axioms  what  it  cost  persecu- 
tors and  formalists  many  years  of  painful  and  baffled  ef- 
fort to  learn  as  proved  truths,  while  on  a  visit  to  England 
in  1643,  wrote  and  left  for  publication  there  a  little  tract 
with  the  title,  "  Christenings  make  not  Christians ;  Or  a 
brief  Discourse  concerning  that  name  Heathen,  commonly 
given  to  the  Indians.  As  also  concerning  that  great  point 
of  their  conversion."  1  In  this  tract  the  writer,  referring 
to  the  Spanish  and  French  religious  dealings  with  the  na- 
tives, says :  — 

"  If  the  reports  (yea  some  of  their  own  Historians)  be  true,  what 
monstrous  and  most  inhumane  conversions  have  they  made  !  —  bap- 
tizing thousands,  yea  ten  thousands,  of  the  poore  Natives ;  sometimes 
by  wiles  and  subtle  devices,  sometimes  by  force,  compelling  them 
to  submit  to  that  which  they  understood  neither  before  nor  after 
their  monstrous  Christning  of  them." 

The  claim  has  been  set  up,  and  to  a  certain  extent  al- 
lowed, that  the  Mexicans  and  Aztecs  may  be  regarded  as 
having  reached  a  stage  of  actual  civilization.  It  is  scarcely 
probable  that  the  obscurity  which  invests  our  prehistoric 
times  and  people  will  ever  be  removed.  The  theme  and 

1  This  tract,  known  only  by  quotations  referring  to  it,  was  long  supposed 
to  have  been  irrecoverably  lost,  no  copy  of  it  being  known  as  in  existence.  A 
copy  was  accidentally  discovered,  uncatalogued,  in  the  British  Museum  in 
1880,  by  that  most  diligent,  indefatigable,  and  thoroughly  furnished  literary 
antiquarian,  Dr.  Henry  Martyn  Dexter,  and  has  been  reprinted  in  Providence, 
K.  I.,  1881. 


HUMAN  SACRIFICES  AND   CANNIBALISM.  75 

field  offer  very  tempting,  and  to  some  extent  rewarding, 
subjects  for  curious  research  and  ingenious  theory.  But 
the  theories  crumble  like  the  relics  which  we  handle.  The 
claim  of  having  attained  a  state  of  civilization  can  be  sus- 
tained for  the  Mexicans  only  by  resting  on  the  unsatisfac- 
tory plea  that  there  is  no  sharp,  positive  line  or  point 
which  divides  barbarism  from  civilization.  Prescott  says 
that  the  civilization  of  Mexico  was  equivalent  to  that  of 
England  under  Alfred,  and  similar  to  that  of  ancient  and 
modern  Egypt.  The  basis  of  this  estimate  is,  that  the 
Mexicans  had  made  an  advance  on  a  nomadic  life  as  hunters, 
and  were  fixed  cultivators  of  the  soil,  raising  corn,  cotton, 
and  vegetables,  with  skilled  manufactures,  with  adobe  dwell- 
ings, with  hieroglyphical  records  for  their  annals ;  and  that 
they  showed  architectural  skill,  as  also  ingenuity  in  a  method 
of  irrigating  their  fields. 

After  making  due  allowance  for  the  pure  fictions  and  the 
proved  exaggerations  of  the  early  Spanish  chroniclers, 
all  that  seems  certified  to  us  about  the  husbandry  and 
manufactures,  the  palatial  and  ceremonial,  pomp,  and  the 
forms  of  law  among  the  Mexicans,  would  not  set  them  be- 
yond that  state  which,  when  speaking  of  Orientals,  we  call 
barbaric. 

It  can  hardly  be  allowed  that  a  people  are  in  any  appre- 
ciable stage  of  civilization  who  offer  human  sacrifices  and 
eat  human  flesh.  Nor  does  it  much  relieve  the  matter 
to  suggest  that  the  latter  hideous  practice  did  not  indicate 
a  cannibal  relish  for  such  viands,  but  was  simply  incident 
to  the  previous  religious  ceremonial  of  offering  human 
victims  in  sacrifice.  The  evidence  seems  sufficient  that 
human  flesh  was  a  marketable  commodity  in  Mexico,  hav- 
ing a  place  with  other  food  at  the  shambles ;  and  that 
dainty  dishes  of  it  were .  daily  served  among  the  hundred 
courses  on  Montezuma's  table.  Peter  Martyr  tells  us  how 
"  the  hellish  butchers/'  as  he  calls  them,  prepared  it.  The 
blood  of  infants  was  used  in  the  composition  of  sacrifi- 


76  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS  AND   INVADERS. 

cial  cakes  :  some  of  these  were  once  sent  as  a  propitiatory 
offering  to  Cortes.  It  may  be  urged  that  even  these  prac- 
tices do  not  bar  a  claim  to  a  stage  of  civilization,  if  we  still 
allow  the  term  where  superstition  about  God  and  cruelty 
towards  men  match  the  most  foul  and  atrocious  practices 
of  savages. 

There  are  not  lacking  in  our  voluminous  literature  on 
this  subject  —  representing,  as  it  does,  the  diversity  of 
opinions  and  judgments  passed  on  the  methods  of  the 
Spanish  invaders,  as  presented  in  different  aspects  —  plead- 
ings reducing  or  palliating  the  atrocities  which  to  us  seem 
unrelieved,  as  springing  from  a  ruthless  cruelty.  Hum- 
boldt  says  that  we  must  allow  in  them  for  other  and  less 
mean  passions  than  rapacity  and  fanaticism.  Tracing  these 
passions  and  others  associated  with  them  to  their  springs, 
they  may  be  found  to  have  arisen,  and  to  have  been  inten- 
sified in  their  indulgence,  by  what  we  may  call  —  though  we 
can  but  vaguely  define  it — the  chivalric  spirit  of  the  peo- 
ple and  the  age.  This  spirit  —  associated  with  crusades 
and  religious  wars,  with  the  embittered  hate  of  Moslems 
and  Jews,  with  daring  and  reckless  enterprises  of  adven- 
ture, with  utter  fearlessness  in  risking  one's  own  limbs 
and  life,  and  with  a  burning  emulation  of  achievement 
through  prowess  and  desperate  endeavor  —  was  transferred 
from  its  old,  familiar,  and  comparatively  exhausted  fields 
to  wholly  new  scenes,  materials,  and  opportunities.  These 
seem  to  have  presented  to  the  Spaniards  no  incitements  to 
mental  activity,  to  curious  inquiries  as  to  the  antecedents 
of  their  new  surroundings,  to  speculative  or  scientific  inves- 
tigations. All  these  intellectual  instigations  and  processes, 
which  have  been  so  sedulously  and  ingeniously  exercised 
under  the  quickening  influences  of  the  modern  expansion 
of  intelligence,  had  no  attraction  for  those  of  such  inert 
and  undeveloped  natures  as  marked  the  heterogeneous 
companies  of  adventurers  flocking  here  with  untrained 
principles  and  under  the  spell  of  the  wildest  impulses. 


77 

The  simple  natives  of  the  valleys  and  the  mountains  were 
regarded  as  game  for  the  hunt.  Had  these  natives  been 
of  a  sturdier  stock,  —  heroic,  defiant,  and  resolved,  and 
able  from  the  first  to  contest  each  step  and  to  resent  each 
wrong  of  the  invaders, — the  game  would  at  least  have 
been  lifted  above  a  mere  hunt  as  for  foxes  and  rabbits  to 
the  more  serious  enterprise  of  an  encounter  with  buffaloes, 
panthers,  and  grizzly  bears.  The  tameness  and  defence- 
lessness  of  the  natives  seem  even  to  have  become  incite- 
ments to  the  Spaniards  for  a  wanton  sport  of  outrage  upon 
them.  There  were  master  minds  among  the  invaders, — 
men  temporarily  at  least  invested  with  powers,  by  com- 
missions and  instructions  from  their  sovereigns,  to  exercise 
authority  in  the  interests  of  wisdom  and  humanity.  But 
their  jealousies  and  the  intrigues  of  their  enemies  at  the 
court  were  constantly  disabling  and  displacing  them ;  so 
that  there  was  here  no  grasp  of  control,  no  sternness  of 
law  and  obedience. 

The  progress  of  the  same  kind  of  conquest  by  the  Span- 
iards who  first  came  into  contact  with  the  savages  in  the 
southern  portion  of  our  present  domain,  was  attended  by 
the  same  outrages  and  barbarities  which  marked  its  begin- 
nings. De  Soto  had  received  his  training  for  the  opening 
and  conquest  of  the  regions  of  Alabama,  Georgia,  and  Mis- 
sissippi, while  a  youth  under  Pizarro,  in  Peru.  On  his 
return  the  Spanish  court  made  him  governor  of  Cuba,  and 
Adelantado,  or  provincial  governor,  of  Florida.  On  arriv- 
ing in  Florida,  in  May,  1539,  his  first  business  was  to  cap- 
ture some  natives  as  slaves,  pack-carriers,  and  guides.  He 
found  great  help  as  an  interpreter  in  a  Spaniard,  Juan  Ortiz, 
who,  having  been  captured  by  the  Indians  from  the  com- 
pany under  Narvaez,  in  1528,  had  been  living  among  them. 
De  Soto  had  about  a  thousand  followers,  soldiers  in  full 
armor,  with  cutlasses  and  fire-arms,  one  cannon,  two  hun- 
dred and  thirteen  horses,  greyhounds  and  blood-hounds, 
handcuffs,  neck-collars,  and  chains  for  captives,  all  sorts 


78  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

of  equipments  and  workmen,  swine  and  poultry,  priests, 
monks,  and  altar  furniture.  He  had  learned  in  Peru  just 
what  appliances  were  necessary  for  hounding  and  torment- 
ing savages.  But'  he  had  a  rough  and  fierce  experience  in 
Florida.  The  natives  were  numerous,  bold,  and  enraged 
by  the  memory  of  the  barbarities  of  Narvaez.  Yet  he  was, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  successful.  He  soon  captured  In- 
dians enough  to  carry  his  baggage  and  to  do  the  menial 
work  of  his  camps,  as  goaded  slaves.  He  steadily  hewed 
on  his  plundering  way,  with  an  expedition  to  Pensacola 
and  an  invasion  of  Georgia.  Though  he  received  kind 
treatment  and  warm  hospitality  from  many  chiefs  and 
their  tribes,  he  villanously  repaid  it  by  all  manner  of  das- 
tardly outrages,  led  on  and  maddened  by  the  hope  of 
mineral  treasures,  and  indulging  in  abominable  debauch- 
eries. After  having  been  generously  entertained  for  thirty 
days  where  now  stands  the  town  of  Rome,  he  proceeded  to 
ravage  the  neighboring  country.  With  Indians  as  his  bur- 
den carriers,  he  entered  Alabama,  in  July,  1540,  where  the 
natives  had  then  their  first  sight  of  white  men  and  horses. 
The  pestiferous  miasmas  of  those  fair  and  fruitful  regions 
proved  very  fatal  to  the  Europeans,  and  the  swamps,  mos- 
quitoes, and  alligators  would  have  overborne  the  fortitude 
and  resolve  of  the  invaders  but  for  the  passion  for  wealth 
that  lured  them  on.  The  enslaved  natives  had  to  carry  on 
litters  many  sick,  in  addition  to  their  other  burdens.  De 
Soto  had  brought  with  him  from  Florida  five  hundred  of 
the  natives,  men  and  women,  chained  and  under  guard. 
As  any  of  these  sickened  or  died,  their  places  were  sup- 
plied by  fresh  captives  from  bands  of  the  Indians  who 
ventured  to  face  him.  The  simple  and  bewildered  natives 
soon  lost  all  the  dread  and  awe  with  which  they  would 
have  continued  to  venerate  the  strangers,  as  they  saw 
them  not  only  reduced  by  common  human  weaknesses, 
but  exhibiting  their  odious  character  as  robbers,  thieves, 
assassins,  and  cruel  desperadoes.  The  Spaniards  visited 


THE  SPANIARDS   ON  THE  PACIFIC.  79 

the  vilest  outrages  upon  those  who  treated  them  with  the 
most  deference  and  friendliness.  Making  their  way  to 
Mobile,  the  mailed  scoundrels  were  withstood  by  the  brave 
but  unprotected  natives,  who  were  overborne  by  horrible 
carnage.  A  battle  which  lasted  for  nine  hours  proved 
severe  in  its  results  upon  the  Spaniards.  Eighty-two  of 
them  were  killed,  with  forty-five  of  their  horses.  All  their 
camp  equipage,  stores,  instruments,  medicines,  and  sacra- 
mental furniture  were  burned.  Of  the  savages  five  or  six 
hundred  were  slain.  After  similar  progress  and  ravages 
De  Soto  reached  the  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  where,  worn 
out  by  excitement,  effort,  and  disease,  he  died,  in  May, 
1542  ;  and  his  body  was  sunk  by  night  in  the  turbid 
stream. 

His  successor  in  command,  with  a  remnant  of  three  hun- 
dred and  twenty  men  of  the  splendid  army  of  one  thousand, 
—  their  array  humiliated  and  reduced  to  starvation,  —  leav- 
ing five  hundred  of  his  Indian  slaves  and  taking  with  him 
one  hundred,  put  together  some  wretched  rafts,  and  floating 
down  the  river  landed  again  at  Tampa  Bay,  after  four  years 
of  reckless  and  devastating  wandering  through  Florida, 
Georgia,  Alabama,  Mississippi,  and  the  Arkansas  territory. 
The  natives  had  been  terribly  reduced  in  numbers,  except  in 
Georgia.  The  Muscogees,  previously  living  in  the  Ohio  Val- 
ley, moved  down  soon  after  to  Alabama,  incorporating  with 
them  remnants  of  northern  tribes  which  had  been  ravaged 
by  the  Iroquois  and  Hurons.  It  is  to  this  miscellaneous 
gathering  from  fragments  of  adopted  and  conquered  tribes 
that  the  English,  when  first  penetrating  the  country,  gave 
the  name  of  "  Creeks,"  from  the  number  of  streams  which 
course  it. 

The  Spaniards  were  the  first  of  Europeans  to  come  into 
contact  with  the  natives  on  our  Pacific  coast.  While  Piz- 
arro,  after  crossing  the  Isthmus,  went  southward,  and  with 
heroic  perseverance  against  all  bafflings  discovered  Peru, 
in  1527,  and  made  his  "  Conquest "  of  it  in  1532,  another 


80  SPANISH  DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

party  went  northward.  The  further  lure  was  the  dis- 
covery of  the  Spice  Islands.  A  station  for  supplies  was 
established  at  Panama.  Gil  Gonzalez  claimed  the  whole 
country  of  Nicaragua,  whose  coast  he  visited.  The  Span- 
iards claim  special  success  and  benefit  for  the  natives  from 
their  mission  and  civilizing  work  among  them  in  California, 
when  entered  by  Cabrillo,  in  1542.  Their  mission  work, 
however,  did  not  begin  till  near  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  This  mission  work  was  begun  by  the  Jesuits,  and 
was  pursued  by  them  till  the  general  expulsion  of  the  order 
from  the  Spanish  dominions.  The  Franciscans  succeeded 
them,  and  then  the  Dominicans.  Alexander  Forbes,  in  his 
"History  of  California,"  gives  from  the  work  of  Father  Yene- 
gas,  and  from  his  own  observations,  very  interesting  ac- 
counts of  the  condition  and  results  of  the  Spanish  missions. 
The  field  was  a  stern  and  hard  one,  but  it  had  been  heroi- 
cally worked.  There  were  sixteen  stations  there  in  1767, 
when  the  Jesuits  were  expelled.  The  funds  for  the  mis- 
sions were  invested  in  farms  in  Mexico. 

We  may  here  anticipate  a  statement,  to  be  more  fully  ad- 
vanced on  later  pages,  that  the  Roman  Catholic  missions 
among  the  Indians,  from  the  very  first  down  to  our  own 
times,  have  been  far  more  successful  in  accomplishing  the 
aims  and  results  which  they  have  had  in  view,  than  have 
been  those  of  any  or  of  all  the  denominations  of  Protestants. 
But  those  aims  and  expected  results  have  been  most  widely 
unlike,  if  not  in  full  contrast,  as  had  in  view  and  labored  for 
by  Catholics  and  Protestants.  In  nothing  concerning  the 
theology  or  the  government  and  discipline  of  those  severed 
parties  of  the  Christian  fold,  is  the  difference  between  them 
so  broad  or  so  deep  as  in  the  fundamental  variance  of  their 
respective  views  as  to  the  essential  requisite  for  the  conver- 
sion and  Christianization  of  an  American  savage.  Devout 
and  heroic  priests  of  the  Roman  Church,  sharing  the  sweet 
and  humane  spirit  of  Las  Casas,  soon  came  hither  from 
Spain  on  their  consecrated  missions,  and  according  to  their 


PRIESTLY   METHODS   WITH   THE   INDIAN.  81 

light  in  the  exercise  of  their  office,  their  interpretation  of  the 
Christian  Gospel,  and  in  loyalty  to  holy  Church,  they  spent 
their  lives,  in  perfect  self-abnegation,  through  perils  and 
stern  sacrifices,  in  efforts  to  win  the  savages  into  the  saving 
fold.  It  seems  to  us  that  what  they  were  content  to  aim  for 
would  have  been  most  easy  of  accomplishment ;  that  the 
method  which  they  adopted  and  the  result  which  was  to  give 
them  full  satisfaction  were  such  as  might  have  been  read- 
ily realized,  especially  when  we  consider  the  docility  of  the 
race  of  savages  who  were  the  first  subjects  of  their  efforts. 
They  did  not  task  in  any  way  the  understandings  of  the  na- 
tives, nor  provoke  them  to  curious  and  perplexing  exerci- 
ses. They  started  with  the  positive  authority,  conveyed  in 
simple,  direct  assertion,  without  explanation  or  argument, 
of  the  few  fundamental  doctrines  of  the  Church ;  asking 
only,  and  fully  content  with,  assent  to  them,  however 
faint  might  be  the  apprehension  of  them  by  the  neophytes, 
and  however  vacant  or  bewildered  the  mind  which  was 
to  assimilate  from  them  ideas  or  convictions.  These  pro- 
cesses of  the  understanding  might  be  expected  to  follow 
after,  if  they  were  naturally  and  healthfully  prompted,  in 
the  Christian  development  of  the  savage ;  but  implicit  ac- 
ceptance of  the  elementary  lessons  was  all  that  was  ex- 
acted. The  Creed  and  the  Lord's  Prayer  were  taught  them 
by  rote,  first  in  Latin  or  Spanish,  and  as  soon  as  possible 
interpreted  in  their  own  tongues.  Then  the  altar  service 
of  the  Church,  with  such  gestures  and  observances  as  it 
required,  with  the  help  of  candles,  pictures,  emblems,  and 
processions  for  interpreting  and  aiding  it,  constituted  the 
main  part  of  what  was  exacted  as  the  practice  of  Christian 
piety.  The  wild  habits,  customs,  mode  of  life,  and  relations 
to  each  other  of  the  savages  were  interfered  with  as  little 
as  possible.  The  rite  of  baptism  sealed  the  salvation  of 
the  subject  of  it,  whether  infant  or  adult,  and  there  was 
haste  rather  than  delay  in  granting  the  boon.  All  the  hard 
task-work  of  the  Protestant  missionary,  to  convey  didactic 


82  SPANISH    DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

instruction,  to  implant  ideas,  to  stir  mental  activity,  to  ex- 
plain doctrines,  to  open  arguments,  was  dispensed  with  by 
the  priest  of  the  Roman  Church.  The  Protestant  could  not 
take  the  first  step  in  the  conversion  of  a  native  without 
advancing  it  upon  a  previous  stage  in  the  process  of  civili- 
zation. His  only  medium  was  the  mind,  without  any  help 
from  objective  teaching  by  ritual,  picture,  or  observance,  or 
any  aid  from  sense.  The  hopeful  convert  for  the  Protes- 
tant was  considered  as  making  difficult  progress  in  his  dis- 
cipleship  just  to  the  degree  in  which  he  changed  the  whole 
manner  and  habit  of  his  life. 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  Franciscan  and 
the  Jesuit  Fathers  have  found  satisfaction  in  their  mission 
work  among  the  American  aborigines.  They  set  for  them- 
selves an  aim,  with  methods  and  conditions  for  securing  it; 
and  though  these,  being  conformed  to  the  theory  of  the 
Roman  Church,  may  seem  altogether  inadequate  as  viewed 
by  Protestants,  they  were  the  rule  for  its  priests,  and  the 
result  has  stood  to  them  for  success. 

In  the  judgment  of  Protestants,  however,  without  any 
sharp  indulgence  of  a  sectarian  spirit,  it  is  to  be  affirmed, 
that,  even  if  all  the  priests  had  been  wise  and  faithful 
in  their  offices,  this  would  not  relieve  the  invasion  and 
administration  of  the  Spaniards  in  America  from  the  se- 
vere reproach  of  a  most  unchristian  treatment  of  the 
natives.  The  fidelity  of  the  priests,  taken  in  connection 
with  the  wilful  recklessness  of  the  soldiers  and  marauders, 
would  but  serve  to  confirm  in  the  minds  of  Protestants 
a  conviction  which  has  many  other  tokens  to  warrant  it, 
—  that  in  the  Roman  system  the  Church  is  the  priest- 
hood, the  laity  being  only  a  constituency  and  a  following. 
Had  the  disciples  of  the  Church  no  responsibility  in  the 
matter  ? 

We  have  to  look  to  the  theocratical  commonwealth  estab- 
lished by  the  Jesuits  in  Paraguay,  with  its  military  appli- 
ances and  fortresses,  its  rigidity  of  discipline,  and  its  minute 


THE   CALIFORNIA   MISSIONS.  83 

oversight  of  all  the  incidents  and  experiences  of  the  daily 
life  of  the  natives,  for  an  illustration  of  the  ideal  of  mission 
work  as  entertained  by  the  priests  of  that  period.  The 
Jesuit  commonwealth  stands  in  strange  contrast  with  the 
Puritan  theocracy  of  Massachusetts,  and  it  would  be  a 
curious  study  to  draw  out  that  contrast  in  particulars  as 
covering  matters  of  faith  and  rules  of  life.  Our  views  of 
the  extreme  austerity  and  bigotry  of  the  Puritan  discipline 
as  enforced  among  themselves  by  a  company  of  English 
Protestants,  would  find  quite  another  field  for  their  exer- 
cise in  tracing  the  method  of  priestly  control  over  a  gene- 
rally docile  and  inert  people,  who  were  to  be  isolated  on 
their  peninsular  domain  from'  all  intercourse  with  the  open 
world. 

The  Fathers  in  the  California  missions  had  for  the  most 
part  to  feed  and  clothe  their  converts,  to  arrest  their  no- 
madic life,  and,  as  the  soil  was  light,  to  bring  in  the  means 
of  subsistence.  The  population  of  Lower  California  pre- 
sented to  Forbes,  in  1835,  a  curious  mixture  of  the  progeny 
of  European  seamen,  Spanish  Creoles,  and  Indians.  The 
writer  says  the  missionaries  had  the  finest  fields  and  cli- 
mate, the  fairest  opportunities,  and  the  most  facile  subjects. 
But  while  he  extols  their  sincerity  and  devotion,  the  results 
of  their  labors  were  to  him  doleful  and  dreary  enough. 
u  Most  of  the  missions,"  he  says,  "  are  in  a  wretched  con- 
dition, and  the  Indians  —  poor  and  helpless  slaves,  both  in 
body  and  mind  —  have  no  knowledge  and  no  will  but  those 
of  the  Friars."  The  word  domesticated,  as  applied  to  ani- 
mals, is  more  applicable  to  them  than  the  word  civilized. 
In  1833  about  twenty  thousand  natives  were  connected 
with  the  missions,  and  soldiers  were  needed  at  every  sta- 
tion. The  Indians  were  lazy  and  helpless  slaves,  fed 
and  flogged  to  compel  their  attendance  on  the  Mass,  and 
besotted  by  superstition. 

When  California  was  joined  to  the  Union,  it  was  esti- 
mated,—  doubtless,  extravagantly,  —  that  there  were  in 


84  SPANISH   DISCOVERERS   AND   INVADERS. 

its  bounds  one  hundred  thousand  Indians,  and  that  a  fifth 
part  of  these  were  more  or  less  connected  with  the  mis- 
sions, partially  civilized,  jobbing,  begging,  stealing,  labor- 
ing on  the  farms  of  Europeans,  gambling  and  drinking, 
and  generally  in  stages  of  improvidence,  dissoluteness,  and 
imbecility.  The  wild  Indians  in  the  gold-bearing  regions 
were  ruthlessly  dealt  with  by  adventurers,  explorers,  and 
miners. 

After  futile  efforts  by  Congress  by  appropriations  through 
commissioners  and  agents,  —  of  which  the  Indians  were 
wickedly  defrauded,  being  only  the  more  ingeniously 
wronged,  —  in  1853  tracts  of  twenty-five  thousand  acres 
were  defined  as  Reservations  for  them.  The  hope  was  to 
secure,  by  the  aid  of  resident  guardians  and  advisers,  and 
on  a  larger  scale,  all  that  had  been  good  in  the  farming 
and  missionary  methods  of  the  Spaniards. 

It  would  have  been  gratifying  to  our  national  pride,  if,  in 
closing  the  review  of  the  harrowing  history  of  the  dealings 
of  the  Spaniards  with  the  original  tribes  on  our  present 
domain,  we  could  say  truly,  that  the  transfer  of  respon- 
sibility to  our  own  Government  had  essentially  modified 
or  improved  the  condition  of  those  representatives  of  the 
native  stock  which  had,  for  three  centuries,  been  under  the 
ecclesiastical  and  colonial  charge  of  the  royal  successors  of 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS  ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  PERSON,  AND  CHARACTER. 

IT  would  have  been  but  reasonable  to  have  expected  that 
the  opening  of  an  inhabited  continent  —  more  than  half  the 
land  surface  of  the  globe  —  to  the  intelligent  curiosity  of 
the  representatives  of  the  civilization  of  the  Old  World, 
would  have  contributed  largely  to  the  sum  and  the  ele- 
ments of  our  knowledge  of  the  origin  and  history  of  our 
human  race.  Anything  that  was  to  be  learned  of  aborig- 
inal life  here  would  have  been  invaluable  to  the  archaeol- 
ogist, and  might  have  served  towards  solving  the  problems 
yet  left  unfathomed  by  all  the  skill  of  science  and  all  the 
monumental  relics  on  the  other  continents.  Whether  either 
of  these  halves  of  the  globe  had  originally  received  its  hu- 
man inhabitants  from  the  other  half,  or  had  been  stocked 
each  by  its  independent  ancestry,  an  unknown  lapse  of  ages 
had  transpired  without  intercourse  between  them.  We 
might  have  looked  at  least  for  the  means  of  deciding  this 
alternative  of  unity  or  diversity  in  the  origin  of  our  race. 
The  means  for  that  decision  would  have  been  sought  in 
traditions  and  tokens  of  a  primitive  kinship  and  history, 
while  any  radical  and  heterogeneous  characteristics  run- 
ning through  the  inhabitants  of  either  half  of  the  globe 
would  have  brought  their  unity  of  origin  under  serious 
question.  Regrets  have  often  been  expressed  that  this 
question  was  not  at  once  made  the  subject  of  keenly  in- 
telligent investigation  by  the  first  Europeans  in  their  inter- 


86  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

course  with  the  aborigines.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that 
the  opportunity  would  have  favored  the  acquisition  of  some 
positive  and  helpful  knowledge  which  has  since  failed.  It 
is  very  doubtful,  however,  whether  the  lapse  of  the  last  four 
centuries  has  really  deepened  what  was  then  the  obscurity 
that  covered  these  inquiries.  What  are  supposed  to  be  the 
oldest  crania  and  other  human  relics  on  the  continent 
generally  crumble  to  dust  when  exposed  to  light  and  air. 
One  of  our  archasologists  tells  us  that  some  bones  of  the 
mastodon,  antedating  the  age  of  the  Mound  Builders,  when 
excavated  from  a  peat-swamp,  yielded  gelatinous  matter 
for  constituting  a  rich  soup.1  But  there  are  no  such  juices 
left  here  in  the  relics  of  primeval  man.  It  was  only  after 
long  intervals  of  time  that  different  longitudinal  and  latitu- 
dinal sections  of  this  northern  half  of  our  continent  were 
reached  by  white  men.  About  a  century  intervened  be- 
tween the  first  intercourse  of  the  Spaniards  with  the  south- 
ern tribes  and  that  of  the  French  with  the  northern  tribes. 
Cabeza  de  Vaca,  of  the  company  of  Narvaez,  is  accredited 
as  the  first  European  who  stood  on  the  banks  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, and  crossed  the  continent  from  sea  to  sea,  in  1528. 
The  Sieur  Nicolet  was  the  first  of  Frenchmen  who.  in  1689, 
reached  the  waters  of  that  river  from  the  north.  The  first* 
pueblo  captured  in  Mexico  by  Cortes  was  in  1520.  Corona- 
do's  expedition  against  the  "  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola  "  was  in 
1540.  Some  Village  Indians  in  New  Mexico  are  thought 
to  be  in  the  present  occupancy  of  the  adobe  houses  of  their 
predecessors  at  the  Conquest.  This  term,  "  Village  In- 
dians," is  expressive  of  a  distinction  gradually  coming  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  whites  between  sedentary  and  roving 
tribes  of  the  aborigines.  Our  information  is  very  scanty  as 
to  the  characteristics  of  difference,  in  gross  and  in  detail, 
between  various  tribes  of  Indians  originally,  and  imme- 
diately subsequent  to  their  first  intercourse  with  the  whites. 
We  know  but  little  of  the  conditions  of  proximity,  relation- 

1  Foster's  Pre- Historic  Races,  p.  370. 


INDIAN   COMMUNAL   LIFE.  87 

ship,  and  necessity  which  drew  them  into  fellowships,  with 
common  interests  among  themselves,  called  by  us  "  tribes," 
or  to  what  extent  alliances  existed  among  them  for  peace 
and  war.  There  were  needful  limitations  in  the  size  of 
those  fellowships,  imposed  by  the  conditions  of  their  ex- 
istence. The  Natchez  and  Arkansas  tribes  are  regarded  as 
among  the  most  advanced  of  those  of  our  northern  section 
when  first  known  to  Europeans. 

The  late  Lewis  H.  Morgan,  partly  through  the  inter- 
pretation of  facts,  and  partly  with  the  inferences  from  a 
reasonable  theory,  has  contributed  valuable  aid  to  our  un- 
derstanding of  aboriginal  life.  He  maintains  that  their 
household  life  was  constructed  on  the  communal  system, 
uniting  affiliated  families  as  a  gens.  When  the  Five  Na- 
tions, or  Iroquois,  inhabiting  central  New  York,  were  first 
visited  by  Europeans,  they  were  found  to  be  gathered  in 
family  groups  of  twenty,  forty,  or  even  larger  households, 
all  literally  under  one  roof.  A  "  Long  House,"  constructed 
strongly  and  for  permanency  of  wood  and  bark,  with  a 
continuous  passage  through  the  middle,  one  door  of  en- 
trance, provision  for  the  necessary  number  of  fires,  and 
partitions  dividing  the  area,  was  the  common  home  it  might 
be  even  of  a  hundred  or  more  persons.  The  inmates  shared 
together  the  yield  of  the  harvest  and  the  hunt.  Starting 
from  this  well-certified  fact,  Mr.  Morgan  proceeds  to  draw 
reasonable  inferences  that  this  communal  system  for  life, 
for  affiliated  families  or  companies  of  the  aborigines, —  gen- 
erally, and  indeed  universally,  except  where  circumstances 
might  have  withstood  it,  —  prevailed  among  them.  It  was 
once  supposed  that  the  extensive  adobe  structures  in  New 
Mexico  and  in  Central  America  —  with  their  walled  en- 
closures unpierced  in  the  lower  story  by  door  or  window, 
and  terraced  by  two,  three,  or  more  stories  reared  upon 
them,  to  which  access  was  gained  by  ladders  —  were  the 
remains  of  the  palatial  residences  of  chiefs  and  caciques, 
and  that  they  were  then  surrounded  with  clusters  of  more 


88  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,  ETC. 

humble  abodes,  making  villages  for  the  tribes.  These, 
being  of  frail  structure,  had  left  no  vestige.  But  these 
supposed  palatial  residences  are  now  believed  to  have  an- 
swered to  the  Long  Houses  of  the  Iroquois,  and  to  have 
been  of  communal  use,  —  some  of  them  capable  of  accom- 
modating from  five  to  eight  hundred  families.  It  is  a  fur- 
ther easy  inference  from  the  starting  point  of  fact,  to  affirm 
that  the  "  dirt  lodges  "  of  the  Mandans,  the  caves  of  the 
Cliff  Dwellers,  and  the  Mounds  of  our  western  valleys  bear 
witness  to  the  same  communal  mode  of  life  of  our  abo- 
rigines. It  is  supposed  that  those  mounds  of  earth  —  a 
substitute  for  stone  where  it  was  not  available  for  the  pur- 
pose —  were  simply  the  base  for  the  erection  over  them  of 
dwellings  of  wood  or  bark,  which  have  perished.  This 
theory  also  suggests  and  favors  a  method  for  distinguish- 
ing several  stages  or  types  in  savage  life,  between  extreme 
barbarism  and  approximations  towards  civilization. 

It  would  simply  embarrass  the  mainly  narrative  purpose 
of  this  volume  to  attempt  here  any  elaborate  or  even  concise 
statement  of  the  distribution,  classification,  organization, 
and  designation  by  names  or  localities  of  our  aboriginal 
tribes.  Such  information  —  not  by  any  means  always 
accordant  —  as  special  inquirers  and  writers  on  these  in- 
tricate and  perplexed  themes  have  furnished,  is  easily  acces- 
sible in  our  abounding  literature  of  the  subject.  Yery  few 
of  the  names  originally  attached  by  the  first  Europeans 
here  to  the  tribes  earliest  known  to  them  are  now  in  use. 
The  same  tribes  were  known  by  different  appellations  as- 
signed to  them  by  the  French,  the  Dutch,  and  the  English. 
There  has  been  a  steady  increase  of  appellations  for  bands 
and  tribes,  as  the  whites  have  extended  their  intercourse 
and  relations  with  them.  Within  the  last  two  or  three 
decades  each  year  has  added  new  titles  on  the  lists  of 
the  Reports  of  the  Indian  Commissioners.  Some  of  the 
earliest  known  tribes  —  as  the  Pamunkeys  of  Virginia, 
the  Lenape  of  Pennsylvania,  the  Narragansetts,  the  Molri- 


PLACE   OF   THE    SAVAGE    IN   HUMANITY.  89 

cans,  the  Pequots,  and  the  Nipmucks  of  New  England  — 
have  become  extinct,  or  such  surviving  remnants  of  their 
stock  as  may  exist  have  been  merged  in  other  tribes ;  what 
there  are  of  the  Lenape  are  now  known  as  Delawares. 
The  same  processes  of  the  absorption  or  extinction  of  tribal 
names,  which  began  among  the  aborigines  on  the  sea-coast, 
have  followed  the  extension  of  invasions  and  settlements 
through  the  whole  breadth  of  the  continent.  One  tribe  has 
adopted  the  remnant  of  one  or  more  other  tribes,  giving  to 
them  its  own  name,  or  appropriating  a  new  one.  Many 
of  the  original  and  of  the  existing  tribes  were  and  are 
known  by  an  alias.  Such  titles  as  the  Nez-Perces,  the 
Gros-Ventres,  and  the  Diggers  speak  for  themselves  as 
conferred  upon,  not  assumed  by,  those  who  bear  them. 
Remnants  of  seventeen  tribes,  collected  from  Oregon  and 
Northern  California,  are  consolidated  in  the  Grande  Ronde 
agency  in  Oregon.  Such  matters  as  are  of  chief  impor- 
tance and  interest  on  these  points  will  present  themselves 
in  subsequent  pages. 

What  is  the  relative  place  on  the  scale  of  humanity  to 
be  assigned  to  the  average  North  American  Indian  ?  Cer- 
tainly, not  near  the  top  of  that  scale  ;  as  certainly,  not  at 
the  foot  of  it.  The  scale  is  a  full  and  varied  one.  We 
know  far  better  than  our  ancestors  knew,  at  the  time  when 
they  first  saw  our  aborigines,  how  many  links  there  are  on 
the  chain  of  a  common  humanity.  The  anatomy  of  the 
skeleton,  the  outlines  of  the  form,  and  the  possession  of 
any  ray  of  that  intelligence  which  we  distingiiish  from 
instinct  in  animals,  —  these  are  in  general  the  certificates 
of  a  claim  for  men  over  brutes.  In  assigning  a  place  on 
the  human  scale  to  any  tribe  or  race  of  human  beings,  we 
must  first  have  defined  to  ourselves  the  specimens  which 
mark  its  highest  and  its  lowest.  Nor  in  either  case  must 
we  accept  an  ideal  as  a  specimen.  The  loftiest  definition 
ever  given  of  the  being  called  man  is  in  the  Scripture  sen- 
tence, that  lie  is  but  "  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  and  is< 


90  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,  ETC. 

crowned  with  glory  and  honor."  The  greatest  of  poets  has 
expanded  this  high  strain :  "  What  a  piece  of  work  is  a 
man!  how  noble  in  reason!  how  infinite  in  faculties!  in  form 
and  moving  how  express  and  admirable  !  in  action  how  like 
an  angel !  in  apprehension  how  like  a  God  !  "  But  we  have 
to  say,  using  one  of  the  trickeries  of  language  of  our  time, 
"  There  are  men,  and  there  are  men."  If  we  should  search 
for  the  lowest  specimen  of  humanity  to  offset  the  topmost 
one,  whether  ideal  or  real,  we  should  by  no  means  find  that 
lowest  specimen  in  an  average  North  American  Indian. 
Stanley  would  furnish  us  from  the  interior  of  Africa  lower 
grades  than  have  ever  been  classified  before.  The  archi- 
pelagoes of  the  Pacific,  especially  the  Fijian,  revealed  the 
lowest  known  to  us.  In  one  point  of  view,  from  Mr.  Dar- 
win's position,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  evolution  theory 
might  prove  itself  from  the  fact  that  there  are  really  no 
"  missing  links "  in  the  gradations  from  brute  to  man. 
Yet,  not  so.  The  line  between  human  beings  and  brute 
creatures  may  be  blurred ;  but  it  is  not  obliterated  or  un- 
traceable.  This,  however,  is  certain,  —  that  there  are  now 
hordes  and  tribes  and  groups  of  such  beings  as  we  have 
nevertheless  to  call  human,  which  present  to  us  man  far, 
far  below  the  average  type  of  the  North  American  savage 
when  he  first  came  to  the  knowledge  of  Europeans. 

The  full,  fair  product  of  a  civilized  human  being  is  the 
result  of  all  possible  favoring  circumstances  of  place,  op- 
portunity, and  advantage  in  a  long  lapse  of  time.  Some 
English  essayist  has  dropped  what  he  would  call  the  clever 
remark,  that  it  takes  a  hundred  years  to  work  up  a  perfect, 
smooth,  grassy  lawn,  and  three  hundred  years  to  breed  a 
lady  or  a  gentleman.  After  the  same  manner  we  may  say 
that  it  has  taken  six  thousand  historic  years  to  produce 
a  race  of  humanized,  civilized,  and  thoroughly  developed 
men  and  women  ;  and  that  the  process  is  not  yet  complete. 
It  might  be  argued  that,  two  or  three  thousand  years  be- 
hind us,  the  refining  influences  of  intelligence  and  culture 


THE   AVERAGE   OP   INTELLIGENCE.  91 

and  high  art  had  carried  a  classic  people  beyond  our  pres- 
ent stage  in  one  range  of  civilization :  and  allowances 
would  also  need  to  be  made  for  arrests  and  reversionary 
processes  in  the  advance  of  a  progressive  race  caused  by 
conquest,  by  change  of  masters,  and  by  the  risks  attending 
emigration  to  new  countries.  Yet  there  is  no  question  but 
that  we  overestimate  the  average  of  intelligence  in  the 
ordinary  human  stock.  We  take  our  standard  at  too  high 
a  level.  The  mass  of  men  and  women,  even  in  a  favored 
and  generally  advanced  community,  are  not  so  well  fur- 
nished in  mind  or  wisdom  as  we  assume  that  they  are  or 
ought  to  be.  The  "  common  sense  "  which  in  compliment 
to  the  large  majority  we  suppose  to  be  in  possession  and 
use  by  them,  is  often  missed  where  we  expected  to  find  it. 
The  credulity,  the  narrowness  of  view,  the  facility  with 
which  they  yield  themselves  to  stark  delusions  and  to 
appeals  to  their  ignorance  and  prejudice,  often  warn  us 
against  setting  so  high  as  we  do  the  average  human  intel- 
ligence. As  a  general  thing  we  expect  and  demand  too 
much  of  our  fellow-men,  seeing  that  they  are  what  they  are 
and  as  they  are.  The  clear-headed  and  practical  sage,  Dr. 
Franklin,  observing  in  one  of  his  long  journeys  abroad  the 
shiftlessness,  thriftlessness,  and  bungling  of  a  number  of 
persons  on  whose  ways  his  searching  eyes  glanced,  wrote 
down  this  rather  caustic  remark  :  "  I  am  persuaded  that 
a  very  large  number  of  men  and  women  would  have  got 
along  much  better  if  they  had  been  furnished  with  a  good, 
respectable  instinct  —  like  animals,  birds,  and  insects  —  in- 
stead of  with  the  intelligence  of  which  they  boast  so  much, 
but  of  which  they  make  so  little  use." 

Acute  writers  who  have  wrought  upon  the  theme  have 
confessed  themselves  unable  to  draw  at  any  point  a  sharp 
dividing  line,  or  to  define  any  one  single  trait,  quality,  or 
condition  which  shall  distinguish  between  a  state  of  civiliza- 
tion and  a  state  of  barbarism  or  savagery. 

Our  latest  science,  alike  archaeological  and  speculative, 


92  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,   ETC. 

fails  to  give  us  positive  knowledge  about  the  origin  of  the 
red  man  and  his  relation  to  the  other  races  of  human 
beings  on  the  other  continents.  Lack  of  knowledge  stimu- 
lates guessing  and  theorizing:  for  these  the  range  is  as 
free  as  ever.  The  theories  are  so  varied  and  conflicting 
that  one  becomes  confused  and  wearied  with  them  to  such 
a  degree  as  to  be  impatient  of  rehearsing  them.  The  favor- 
ite view  of  the  Protestants,  especially  of  our  Puritan  an- 
cestors— in  their  love  of  the  old  Hebrew  Scriptures — was 
that  the  Indians  were  the  descendants  of  the  ten  lost  tribes 
of  Israel,  whom,  Cotton  Mather  suggested,  Satan  might 
have  inveigled  hither  to  get  them  away  from  the  tinkle  of 
the  gospel  bells.  It  was  under  the  prompting  of  this  idea, 
which  was  largely  and  learnedly  argued,  that  the  Puritans 
quickened  their  zeal  to  reclaim  and  convert  the  savages. 
Many  ingenious  attempts  have  been  made  to  trace  among 
the  Indians  usages  and  institutions  akin  to  those  of  the 
Mosaic  law.  The  French  Jesuit  missionaries,  not  being 
especially  partial  to  the  Old  Testament,  did  not  lay  stress 
on  this  motive  for  converting  the  savages.  Roger  Wil- 
liams in  his  day  could  write,  "  From  Adam  and  Noah  that 
they  spring,  it  is  granted  on  all  hands."  But  all  do  not 
grant  that  now.  So  free  and  wild  has  been  the  guessing 
on  the  origin  and  kinship  of  the  Indian  race,  that  resem- 
blances have  been  alleged  to  exist,  in  their  crania  and  fea- 
tures, with  the  Tartars,  the  Celts,  the  Chinese,  Australa- 
sians, Romans,  and  Carthaginians.  This  is  truly  a  large 
range  for  aliases  and  an  alibi.  There  is  somewhat  of  the 
grotesque  in  the  aspect  of  a  European  intruder,  of  another 
stock,  coming  from  across  the  sea,  meeting  the  native  red 
men,  regarding  them  as  an  impertinence  or  an  anomaly, 
and  putting  the  question,  "  Who  are  you  ?  Where  did  you 
come  from?"  The  Indian  rightly  thought  that  it  was  for 
him  to  put  and  for  the  white  man  to  answer  the  query. 
The  Indian  regards  himself  as  a  perfectly  natural  person 
where  he  is  and  as  he  is ;  a  product  and  a  possessor,  not  a 


THE   MOUND    BUILDERS.  93 

waif  nor  a  "  come-by-chance."  Their  own  account  of  them- 
selves was  that  they  were  indigenous,  —  true  aborigines. 
With  this  now  agree  the  conclusions  of  wise  and  judicious 
authorities.  Dr.  S.  G.  Morton,  writing  of  the  "Aboriginal 
Race  of  North  America,"  says  :  "  Our  conclusion,  long  ago 
adduced  from  a  patient  examination  of  facts,  is,  that  the 
American  race  is  essentially  separate  and  peculiar,  whether 
we  regard  it  in  its  physical,  its  moral,  or  its  intellectual 
relations.  To  us  there  are  no  direct  or  obvious  links  be- 
tween the  people  of  the  Old  World  and  the  New."  It  is 
generally  admitted  that  there  is  more  similarity  between 
the  Indians  over  all  North  America  than  there  is  among  the 
inhabitants  of  Europe.  Agassiz  regarded  it  as  proved  that 
this  is  the  oldest  of  the  continents.  If  so,  the  burden  is 
now  shifted  to  Europeans,  Asiatics,  and  Africans  to  account 
for  themselves  as  offspring,  wanderers,  vagabonds,  or  exiles. 
The  Mound  Builders  form  the  heroes  of  much  ingenious 
speculation.  So  far,  little  has  come  of  it  but  relics  of  crude 
pottery.  Loskiel,  the  Moravian  missionary,  speaks  very 
lightly  of  these  puzzling  relics.  Referring  to  what  the 
Indians  told  him,  of  traditions  of  former  more  frequent 
and  ferocious  wars  —  some  hereditary — among  them,  he 
writes :  — 

"  The  ruins  of  former  towns  are  still  visible,  and  several  mounds 
of  earth  show  evident  proofs  that  they  were  raised  by  men.  They 
were  hollow,  having  an  opening  at  the  top,  by  which  the  Indians 
let  down  their  women  and  children,  whenever  an  enemy  approached, 
and,  placing  themselves  around,  defended  them  vigorously.  For 
this  purpose  they  placed  a  number  of  stones  and  blocks  on  the  top 
of  the  mound,  which  they  rolled  down  against  the  assailants.  The 
killed,  in  large  numbers,  were  buried  in  a  hole.  The  antiquity  of 
these  graves  is  known  by  the  large  trees  upon  them."  l 

After  the  Indians  are  all  gone,  we  may  perhaps  be  able 
to  tell  whence  they  came. 

1  History  of  the  Mission  of  the  United  Brethren  to  the  Indians  of  North 
America,  p.  141. 


94  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

An  equally  perplexing  and  distracting  inquiry  with  that 
of  the  origin  of  the  Indians  has'  now  become  another 
question,  as  to  the  number  of  them  when  the  country  was 
reached  and  occupied  by  Europeans.  Of  course,  this  ques- 
tion was  not  intelligently  asked  by  the  first  whites  who  came 
here,  though  they  ventured,  all  at  random,  upon  guesses  and 
estimates.  Those  who  entered  upon  the  continent  at  differ- 
ent points  naturally  drew  widely  contrasted  inferences  on 
the  subject,  according  as  they  encountered  what  they  call 
"  swarms"  of  the  natives,  on  island  or  mainland,  or  passed 
long  reaches  of  territory  wholly  tenantless. 

It  is  only  within  the  last  dozen  years  that  rigid  and  ra- 
tional tests  have  been  applied  to  the  statements  and  tradi- 
tions which  have  found  their  admission  into  our  histories, 
as  to  the  probable  numbers  of  the  native  race  on  this  conti- 
nent when  it  was  opened  to  Europeans.  Wholly  conjectural 
as  the  estimates  were,  the  measure  of  the  extravagance  or 
the  fancy  introduced  into  them  depended  upon  the  range 
or  license  indulged  in  by  those  who  ventured  to  make  them. 
The  admission  is  now  yielded,  without  exception  or  qualifi- 
cation, by  all  intelligent  authorities,  that  the  number  of  the 
natives  in  each  of  the  best-known  tribes,  and  their  whole 
number  on  the  continent  at  the  time  of  its  discovery  have 
been  vastly  overestimated.  All  the  Spanisli  chroniclers 
were  mere  romancers  on  this  point.  The  soldier  Baron 
La  Hontan  was  a  specimen  of  the  same  class  among  the 
French.  John  Smith,  of  Virginia,  who  tells  us  that  that 
country  produced  pearl,  coral,  and  metallic  copper,  and  that 
the  natives  planted  and  harvested  three  crops  of  corn  in  five 
months,  also  multiplies  the  numbers  of  the  Pamunkeys,  to 
exalt  the  state  of  their  "  emperor"  Powhatan.  Our  own 
artist,  Catlin,  allowed  his  imagination  to  create  some  six- 
teen millions  of  Indians  as  once  roaming  here,  when  it  is 
more  than  doubtful  if  a  single  million  were  ever  living  at 
the  same  time  on  the  soil. 

Hispaniola,  or  Little  Spain,  the  name  given  by  Columbus 


ORIGINAL   INDIAN   POPULATION.  95 

to  the  present  Hayti,  or  St.  Domingo,  has  as  before  stated  an 
area  of  about  thirty  thousand  square  miles,  —  or  more  than 
half  the  area  of  England  and  Wales.  When  first  discovered, 
Las  Casas  says  that  it  sustained  three  million  Indians;  he 
afterwards  sets  the  number  at  1,200,000.  The  Licentiate 
Zuazo,  however,  estimated  them  at  1,130,000.  In  1508, 
when  Passamonte  came,  he  put  them  at  seventy  thousand. 
The  Governor,  Diego  Columbus,  estimated  the  number  at 
forty  thousand.  Albuquerque,  in  1514,  counted  them  as 
between  thirteen  and  fourteen  thousand.  This  was  a  vast 
deduction  from  three  millions  in  a  score  of  years.  We  can 
give  the  Spaniards  the  benefit  of  our  charity  in  denying 
their  own  statement,  that  in  less  than  forty  years  they  had 
destroyed  fifteen  millions  of  the  natives,  while  we  also  dis- 
trust the  story  that  Montezuma  led  three  million  warriors. 
We  know  the  claim  of  the  Jesuits  to  have  converted  nine 
millions  of  natives  in  Mexico,  in  a  score  of  years,  to  be  a 
pure  fiction.  Such  random  counts  as  these  have  no  value, 
inasmuch  as  the  evident  exaggeration  is  characteristic  of 
the  extravagant  spirit  of  all  the  Spanish  expectations  and 
accounts  of  their  experience. 

The  practical  matter  of  interest  in  the  estimate  of  the 
probable  number  of  Indians  on  this  continent,  On  the  arrival 
of  the  Europeans,  concerns  us  as  it  bears  on  the  current 
belief,  universally  held  till  within  a  few  years,  substantially 
covering  these  three  assumptions  :  (1)  That  there  was  then 
a  vast  number  of  Indians  here,  to  be  counted  in  millions ; 
(2)  That  this  original  population  has  been  steadily  and 
rapidly  wasting  away ;  and  (3)  That  this  decay  is  the  re- 
sult of  the  destroying  influence  coming  from  the  whites, 
either  in  demoralization  or  by  war.  These  three  assump- 
tions are  now  largely,  if  not  universally,  discredited.  In 
direct  denial  of  them,  it  is  now  affirmed,  with  evidence 
offered  in  proof,  that  the  number  of  the  Indians  here  was 
quite  below  the  old  estimates  ;  that  there  are  substantially 
as  many  on  the  continent  now  as  there  were  on  the  arrival 


96  THE   INDIAN. HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

of  the  white  men ;  and  that  their  own  habits  of  life,  and 
internecine  feuds,  have  been  as  destructive  as  the  influence 
of  the  Europeans.  In  fact,  the  former  overestimates  of  the 
numbers  in  some  tribes,  and  of  the  aboriginal  race,  are  now 
thought  to  have  been  as  wild  if  not  as  poetical  and  vision- 
ary as  the  Indian  traditions  of  their  origin  and  mythical 
ancestry.  In  the  lack  of  any  accredited  facts  drawn  from 
anything  resembling  a  census,  —  and  no  attempt  at  such  a 
process  was  made  till  after  the  middle  of  this  century, — 
we  have  mainly  to  rely  upon  two  helpful  considerations  for 
estimating  the  number  of  the  aborigines  at  any  given  time 
on  any  particular  locality.  The  first  is,  the  effect  of  their 
constant  warfare  among  themselves  in  reducing  their  num- 
ber; and,  second,  the  capacity  of  the  soil,  its  woods  and 
waters,  for  sustaining  a  more  or  less  compact  population 
by  productive  labor  on  tilled  fields,  or  by  the  chase.  Both 
these  considerations  would  naturally  lead  us  to  infer  that 
there  was  no  such  steady  increase  of  population  as  com- 
monly occurs  in  peaceful  life  in  a  civilized  and  industrious 
community.  We  are  besides  to  take  into  view  the  fact, 
well  authenticated,  that  plagues,  contagious  and  epidemical 
diseases,  were  frequent  and  wide  in  their  visitations,  and 
occasionally  effected  a  well-nigh  complete  extinction  of  one 
or  more  tribes  devastated  by  them. 

It  is  significant,  that,  in  every  case  in  which  careful  and 
patient  research  or  inquiry  have  been  brought  into  intelli- 
gent use  in  estimating  the  number  of  one  or  more  Indian 
tribes,  and  of  the  whole  Indian  population,  previous  calcu- 
lations, guessings,  and  inferences  on  the  subject  have  been 
found  to  be  exaggerations.  The  only  associated  groups  of 
tribes  with  which  our  acquaintance  and  knowledge  have 
been  continuous  from  the  beginning  is  the  Iroquois,  who 
have  been  in  intimate  intercourse  with  the  Dutch,  the 
French,  and  the  English  for  more  than  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years.  Sir  William  Johnson,  the  best  informed  of  all 
interested  in  their  number,  placed  it  in  1763  at  11,650.  We 


AMERICAN   INDIANS   AND    SCOTCH    HIGHLANDERS.  97 

have  no  certainty  that  at  any  previous  time  they  really  ex- 
ceeded this  count,  though  La  Hontan  and  others  multiplied 
it  almost  ten  times.  The  old  Iroquois  were  represented  in 
1876-77  by  seven  thousand  in  the  United  States,  and  the 
same  number  in  Canada.  The  number  is  the  same  to- 
day. The  so-called,  civilized  tribes  in  the  Indian  Terri- 
tory, as  counted  in  1809,  were  12,395.  The  Indian  Bureau 
in  1876  numbered  them  at  twenty-one  thousand.  They 
have  doubled  in  forty  years.  The  Indians  who  have  fared 
the  worst  in  decrease  of  numbers  have  been  those  of  Cali- 
fornia and  Oregon. 

If  we  seek  in  a  general  view  of  the  mode  of  life  and  re- 
sources of  the  red  men,  in  some  favored  localities,  to  find 
any  radical  disadvantage  or  disablement  which  put  them 
below  all  communities  of  the  whites  which  we  call  civilized, 
we  can  readily  convince  ourselves  of  our  error  by  compar- 
ing the  state  of  our  Indians  at  the  time  of  the  settlement  of 
this  continent  with  that  of  communities  of  whites  in  Europe 
at  the  same  time.  Mr.  Lecky  in  the  fifth,  sixth,  and  seventh 
chapters  of  his  "  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century  "  condenses  from  his  authorities  such  a  view  of  the 
condition  of  the  common  people  in  Ireland  and  the  High- 
lands of  Scotland  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  as  puts  them 
to  a  disadvantage,  merely  as  to  the  means  and  resources  of 
subsistence,  in  comparison  with  North  American  Indians. 
The  people,  wildly  ruled  in  clans,  were  thieves  and  cattle- 
lifters,  kidnappers  of  men  and  children  to  be  sold  as 
slaves  ;  they  were  ferocious  barbarians,  besotted  with  the 
darkest  ignorance  and  the  grossest  and  gloomiest  super- 
stitions ;  they  scratched  the  earth  with  a  crooked  piece 
of  wood  for  a  plough,  and  a  bush  attached  to  the  tail  of 
a  horse  for  a  harrow,  wholly  dispensing  with  a  harness; 
their  food  was  milk  and  oatmeal  mixed  with  blood  drawn 
from  a  living  cow;  their  cookery,  their  cabins  were  re- 
voltingly  filthy,  causing  disgusting  cutaneous  diseases ; 
they  boiled  their  beef  in  the  hide,  roasted  fowls  in  their 

7 


98  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

feathers,  and  plucked  the  wool  from  the  sheep  instead  of 
shearing  it. 

The  relative  position  or  grade,  on  the  human  scale,  of  any 
tribe  or  race  of  men  —  much  like  that  of  any  one  man 
among  his  fellows  —  is  to  be  measured  by  the  sum  and 
range  of  their  capacities,  and  the  degree  of  their  self- 
improvement  by  the  use  of  means,  resources,  arid  appli- 
ances within  their  reach.  And  the  capacities  of  men  are 
also  to  be  estimated  by  the  extent  to  which  they  actually 
avail  themselves  of  these  means,  appliances,  and  resources ; 
finding  in  native  impulse  and  energy,  quickness  of  wit, 
restlessness  of  feeling,  the  spur  of  progress ;  casting  about 
them  for  reliefs,  helps,  betterments  of  their  condition. 
We  classify  nations  by  the  direction  in  which  they  have 
trained  and  advanced  one  or  another  of  the  abilities  and 
aptitudes  of  our  manifold  nature.  In  the  Greeks,  the 
direction  of  it  was  in  artistic,  poetic,  and  philosophic  cul- 
ture, the  genius  for  which  is  expressed  in  their  wonderful 
language ;  in  the  Romans,  it  was  an  organizing  faculty, 
working  in  the  range  of  law  in  all  its  departments  ;  in  Ger- 
many, research,  scholarship,  jurisprudence ;  in  Italy,  aes- 
thetic, for  poetry,  painting,  and  music ;  in  France,  a  mix- 
ture of  use  and  ornament, — the  packages  in  which  certain 
cosmetics,  etc.,  are  done  up  being  more  ingenious  than 
their  contents ;  in  the  English,  it  is  general  utilitarianism, 
with  strength,  thoroughness,  and  skill ;  in  the  Irish,  it  is  a 
cheerful  willingness  for  hard,  patient,  laborious,  disagree- 
able work,  without  mental  restlessness.  We  know  how 
we,  especially,  are  indebted  to  the  faithful  toil  of  the  Irish 
race ;  yet  I  cannot  recall  a  single  invention,  or  discovery 
in  art  or  science,  ever  made  by  an  Irishman.  If  one  would 
have  before  him  a  full  demonstration  of  the  adroit  and 
acute  inventiveness  and  ingenuity  of  the  Yankee  race,  let 
him  spend  a  week  or  a  month  —  there  will  be  full  employ- 
ment for  it  —  in  the  Patent  Office  at  Washington,  among 
reapers,  thrashers,  and  winnowers,  cotton  mules,  cooking 


THE   ENDOWMENT   OP   THE   INDIAN.  99 

stoves,  apple  parers  and  sausage  machines,  and  needle 
threaders  and  sewing  machines. 

Now  our  aborigines  present  to  us  these  singular  con- 
ditions :  having  a  fine  physique,  vigor  of  body,  acuteness 
of  senses,  few  demoralizing  habits,  good  natural  under- 
standings, and  living  under  a  stimulating  and  healthful, 
not  enervating  climate,  on  good  soil,  they  were  nevertheless 
torpid,  unaroused,  unambitious,  idle,  listless,  indifferent 
to  everything  but  hunting  and  fighting.  Of  the  metals, 
fibres,  chemical  activities  all  around  them  they  made  al- 
most no  use.  No  step  of  progress,  no  sign  of  betterment, 
showed  itself  among  them.  For  all  the  evidence  within 
our  reach  attests  to  us  that  there  was  among  the  savages 
no  token  of  that  discontent  or  yearning  which  is  the  incen- 
tive to  change  for  the  better. 

In  dealing  with  our  whole  subject  under  its  successive 
themes,  we  shall  have  many  occasions  to  present  the  Indian 
under  a  variety  of  characters  and  aspects.  A  few  general 
notes  of  observation  may  come  in  here. 

The  fascinating  description  which  Columbus  wrote  to 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella  of  the  first  savages  that  came 
within  his  view  has  already  been  repeated  here.  Coming 
to  a  later  time  and  to  a  way  of  judging  them  which  we  can 
better  appreciate,  we  take  a  sentence  from  Roger  Will- 
iams, who  had  as  long  and  close  and  curious  an  inter- 
course with  the  Indians  as  any  white  man,  and  who  had 
an  intelligent  and  discerning  spirit.  He  wrote  thus  :  "  For 
the  temper  of  the  brain  in  quick  apprehensions  and  discern- 
ing judgements  (to  say  no  more),  the  most  High  Sovereign 
God  and  Creator  hath  not  made  them  inferior  to  Euro- 
peans." This  relates  to  the  higher  endowment  of  the 
Indian.  For  his  form  and  grace,  his  bearing  and  de- 
meanor, let  us  take  a  few  sentences  from  the  enthusiast 
V  George  Catlin,  who  lived  eight  years  (1832-1840)  with 
such  Indians  as  we  have  now,  visited  forty-eight  of  their 
tribes,  and  painted  in  oil  five  hundred  canvases  of  por- 


100  THE   INDIAN. HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

traits  and  scenes  among  them.  He  says :  "  The  North 
American  Indian  in  his  native  state  is  an  hospitable,  hon- 
est, faithful,  brave,  warlike,  cruel,  revengeful,  relentless,  yet 
honorable,  contemplative,  and  religious  being."  While 
freely  stating  their  defects  and  enormities,  Catlin  adds : 
"  I  have  lived  with  thousands  and  ten  thousands  of  these 
knights  of  the  forest,  whose  whole  lives  are  lives  of  chivalry, 
and  whose  daily  feats  with  their  naked  limbs  might  vie 
with  those  of  the  Grecian  youth  in  the  beautiful  rivalry  of 
the  Olympian  games."  Their  passion  for  stealing  horses, 
Catlin  ascribes  to  their  having  been  trained  to  regard  the 
act  as  a  virtue.  -The  artist  says  he  has  often  seen  six, 
eight,  or  ten  hundred  Indians  engaged  in  their  animating 
ball-playing,  with  five  or  six  times  the  number  of  men, 
women,  and  children  looking  on.  "And  I  pronounce  such 
a  scene  —  with  its  hundreds  of  Nature's  most  beautiful 
models,  denuded,  and  painted  of  various  colors,  running  and 
leaping  into  the  air,  in  all  the  most  extravagant  and  varied 
forms,  in  the  desperate  struggles  for  the  ball  —  a  school  for 
the  painter  or  sculptor  equal  to  any  of  those  which  ever 
inspired  the  hand  of  the  artist  in  the  Olympian  games  or 
the  Roman  forum."  He  adds,  that  they  have  learned  their 
worst  vices  from  the  contamination  of  the  whites,  but  that 
they  find  a  full  equivalent  in  nature  and  freedom  for  all 
the  harassments  of  civilization,  and  make  an  intelligent 
estimate  of  the  relative  advantages  of  either  state  of  man. 
"  They  are  noble  fellows,  noblemen  and  gentlemen.  .  .  . 
I  have  met  with  so  many  acts  of  kindness  and  hospitality 
at  the  hands  of  the  poor  Indian,  that  I  feel  bound,  when  I 
can  do  it,  to  render  what  excuse  I  can  for  a  people  who  are 
dying  with  broken  hearts,  and  never  can  speak  in  the  civil- 
ized world  in  their  own  defence.  .  .  .  Nature  has  no 
nobler  specimen  of  man  or  beast  than  the  Indian  and  the 
buffalo."  Catlin  pleads  with  equal  earnestness  for  the  man 
and  the  beast,  and  suggests  for  his  own  monument  a  grand 
national  park  to  preserve  both  from  extermination.  There 


ESTIMATES   OP  INDIAN    CHARACTER.  101 

is  a  fine  appreciation  here  of  the  intimate  relation  of  de- 
pendence and  a  link  in  destiny,  at  least  as  concerns  vast 
numbers  of  the  old  hunting  tribes  and  the  beast  which  fur- 
nished them  pastime  and  subsistence. 

1  have  quoted  these  evidently  overdrawn  pictures  of  Cat- 
lin  while  fully  aware  of  his  deficiencies  as  an  observer,  and 
of  his  unrestrained  enthusiasm  in  description.  His  rich- 
ness of  fancy  was  offset  by  lack  of  judgment.  He  writes 
more  like  a  child  than  a  well-balanced  man. 

Major  J.  S.  Campion,  in  his  "  Life  on  the  Frontier,"  l 
shows  himself  a  most  intelligent  and  discriminating  ob- 
server of  Indian  life  and  character,  of  which  he  had  large 
experience.  He  says  :  — 

"  That  there  is  a  radical  mental  difference  between  the  races 
is  as  certain  as  that  there  are  physical  ones.  The  dog  and  wolf — 
as  we  are  told  mankind  had  —  niay  have  had  one  pair  of  ances- 
tors ;  but  the  dog  is  naturally  a  domestic  animal :  so  is  the  white 
man,  and  so  are  some  of  the  American  tribes.  The  wolf  still  is, 
he  always  will  be,  a  savage ;  so  has  been,  so  always  will  be,  the 
Apache.  The  philanthropist  sees  no  apparent  reason  why,  with 
proper  culture,  the  Apache  should  not  become  a  useful  member 
of  society.  I  see  no  apparent  reason  why  the  wolf  should  not 
become  as  domestic  as  the  dog ;  but  he  won't.  The  reason  is  a 
mental  difference.  Therein  is  the  root  of  endless  misunderstand- 
ings, of  mutual  injustice,  between  the  races.  But  if  the  earth  was 
made  for  man  to  increase  and  multiply  thereon,  and  have  posses- 
sion, as  it  requires  a  greater  number  of  square  miles  to  support  one 
Apache  than  a  square  mile  will  support  of  civilized  families,  his 
extinction  is  justified  by  the  inevitable  logic  of  the  fitness  of  things. 
He  cannot  be  developed  into  a  civilized  man  :  he  must  give  place 
to  him.  Circumstances  and  early  training  will  sometimes  make  a 
white  boy  into  a  first-rate  savage ;  but  that  is  no  argument  to  prove 
the  converse,  —  only  a  case  of  reversion.  Our  remote  ancestors 
were  painted  savages.  The  cleverest  collie  is  a  descendant  of  dogs 
that  lived  like  wolves  and  foxes.  Every  country  has,  perhaps,  had 
its  true  wild  men,  —  tribes  incapable  of  civilization :  some  coun- 

1  London  ed.,  1878,  p.  355  ct  scq. 


102  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

tries  have  them  yet.  Every  country,  sooner  or  later,  has  its  civil- 
ized races,  —  sometimes  historically  known  to  be  immigrant  ones, 
sometimes  presumably  of  an  equal  antiquity  of  location  to  the  wild 
ones  near  them.  Mexico  is  a  case  in  point.  The  couquistadores 
found  in  that  country  an  ancient,  highly  developed,  apparently  in- 
digenous civilization,  with  a  most  complex  system  of  government 
and  taxation,  an  established  state-religion,  a  thorough  organization 
of  classes,  an  elaborate  school  of  manners  and  etiquette,  • —  a  civili- 
zation in  some  respects  superior  to  their  own ;  and  in  the  same 
country  wild,  nearly  naked  savage  tribes,  equally  indigenous, — 
the  Apaches  of  then  and  to-day.  Time,  soil,  climate,  natural  re- 
sources, had  been  equal  to  them  all,  and  behold  the  difference  of 
result !  It  was  a  case  of  indigenes  capable  of  self-development 
and  not  capable.  .  .  .  Savagery  is  civilization's  childhood." 

These  kindly  and  generous  and  paradoxical,  if  also  en- 
thusiastic, estimates  of  the  average  North  American  savage 
may  fairly  be  quoted  and  emphasized,  because  they  are  so 
rare  in  our  voluminous  Indian  literature.  Of  quite  an- 
other tone  and  strain  is  the  vast  bulk  of  all  that  has  been 
written  about  the  natives,  —  certainly  by  the  pens  of  Eng- 
lishmen from  their  first  contact  here.  With  a  vague  intent 
to  regard  the  savages  pitifully  and  to  treat  them  kindly, 
our  ancestors  here  —  very  soon,  and  largely  through  their 
own  misdealing,  and  for  the  rest  under  the  stress  of  cir- 
cumstances —  came  to  hate  and  loathe  the  Indian,  and  to 
view  him  and  to  speak  of  him  as  a  most  hideous  and  de- 
graded creature.  The  Indian  was  to  them  "the  scum 
of  humanity,"  "the  offscouring  of  the  earth."  When  the 
savage  who  bore  the  title  of  King  Philip,  and  who  planned 
and  led  the  most  devastating  —  well-nigh  exterminating  — 
Avar  ever  waged  between  the  white  and  red  men  on  our  soil, 
was  drawn  out  of  the  miry  swamp  in  which  he  had  been 
slain,  Captain  Church,  his  conqueror,  said,  "  He  was  a  dole- 
ful great  naked,  dirty  beast."  This,  too,  of  an  Indian  mon- 
arch! And  yet  it  was  of  a  neighbor  chief  tain,  lyanough,  of 
the  same  race,  —  from  whom  the  town  of  Hyannis  takes  its 
name,  and  whose  bones  are  preserved  in  a  cabinet  in  the 


ESTIMATES   OF  INDIAN   CHARACTER.  103 

Pilgrim  Hall  at  Plymouth,  —  that  the  early  chronicler 
Mourt  wrote,  that  he  was  "  very  personable,  gentle,  courte- 
ous, and  fair-conditioned  ;  indeed,  not  like  a  savage,  save  for 
his  attire,"  -  —  probably  the  lack  of  it.  Governor  Winslow 
wrote  to  a  friend  in  England  :  "  We  have  found  the  Indi- 
ans very  faithful  to  their  covenants  of  peace  with  us,  very 
loving  and  ready  to  pleasure  us.  We  go  with  them  in 
some  cases  fifty  miles  into  the  country,  and  walk  as  safely 
and  peaceably  in  the  woods  as  in  the  highways  of  England. 
We  entertain  them  familiarly  in  our  houses,  and  they  are 
friendly  in  bestowing  their  venison  upon  us.  They  are  a 
people  without  religion,  yet  very  trusty,  quick  of  appre- 
hension, humorous,  and  just."  And  Winslow's  friend, 
Robert  Cushman,  wrote :  "To  us  they  have  been  like  lambs, 
—  so  kind,  so  trusty,  and  so  submissive  that  many  Chris- 
tians arc  not  so  kind  and  sincere."  When  the  Sachem 
Chicatabot  visited  Boston  in  1631,  we  read  that,  "  being 
in  English  clothes,  the  Governor  (Winthrop)  set  him  at 
his  own  table,  where  lie  behaved  himself  as  an  English 
gentleman." 

A  few  more  estimates  of  Indian  personality  and  charac- 
ter, as  made  in  our  own  time,  may  serve  to  acquaint  us 
with  the  wide  diversity  of  judgment  which  has  from  the 
first  found  strong  expression,  and  then  we  may  attempt 
to  account  for  this  discordance  of  view.  The  chivalrous 
and  heroic  General  Ouster  may  be  regarded  as  a  typical 
authority  among  military  men  for  his  estimate  of  Indian 
character.  He  knew  the  Indian  well  in  war  and  peace. 
He  had  made  the  savage  the  object  of  an  intelligent  and 
closely  and  keenly  observant  study.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  conspicuous  victims  of  Indian  warfare.  Though  the 
General  is  classed  as  among  the  most  effective  "Indian 
fighters,"  and  came  to  his  early  death  at  their  hands  in  a 
fearful  massacre,  he  was  a  man  of  a  humane  and  kindly 
heart.  In  his  "  Life  on  the  Plains,"  referring  to  the  ro- 
mantic, gentle,  and  winning  view  which  Cooper  and  other 


104  THE   INDIAN. HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

romancers  have  given  of  the  Indian,  as  so  misleading  and 
wholly  fanciful,  he  says  :  — 

The  Indian,  "  where  we  are  compelled  to  meet  with  him, — in  his 
native  village,  on  the  war-path,  and  when  raiding  upon  our  frontier 
settlements  and  lines  of  travel, — forfeits  his  claim  to  the  appellation 
of  the  'noble  red  man.'  We  see  him  as  he  is,  and,  so  far  as  all 
knowledge  goes,  as  he  ever  has  been,  —  a  savage  in  every  sense  of 
the  word;  not  worse,  perhaps,  than  his  white  brother  would  be 
similarly  born  and  bred,  but  one  whose  cruel  and  ferocious  nature 
far  exceeds  that  of  any  wild  beast  of  the  desert.  That  this  is  true, 
no  one  who  has  been  brought  into  intimate  contact  with  the  wild 
tribes  will  deny.  Perhaps  there  are  some  who,  as  members  of 
peace  commissions,  or  as  wandering  agents  of  some  benevolent 
society,  may  have  visited  these  tribes,  or  attended  with  them  at 
councils  held  for  some  pacitic  purpose,  and  who  by  passing  through 
the  villages  of  the  Indian  while  at  peace  may  imagine  their  oppor- 
tunities for  judging  of  the  Indian  nature  all  that  could  be  desired  ; 
but  the  Indian,  while  he  can  seldom  be  accused  of  indulging  in 
a  great  variety  of  wardrobe,  can  be  said  to  have  a  character  capable 
of  adapting  itself  to  almost  every  occasion.  He  has  one  character 
— perhaps  his  most  serviceable  one  —  which  he  preserves  carefully, 
and  only  airs  it  when  making  his  appeal  to  the  Government  or  its 
agents,  for  arms,  ammunition,  and  license  to  employ  them.  This 
character  is  invariably  paraded,  and  often  with  telling  effeat,  when 
the  motive  is  a  peaceful  one.  Prominent  chiefs  invited  to  visit 
Washington  invariably  don  this  character,  and  in  their  'talks' 
with  the  '  Great  Father'  and  other  less  prominent  personages  they 
successfully  contrive  to  exhibit  but  this  one  phase.  Seeing  them 
under  these  or  similar  circumstances  only,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
by  many  the  Indian  is  looked  upon  as  a  simple-minded  'son  of 
Mature/  desiring  nothing  beyond  the  privilege  of  roaming  and  hunt- 
ing over  the  vast  unsettled  wilds  of  the  West,  inheriting  and  assert- 
ing but  few  native  rights,  and  never  trespassing  upon  the  rights  of 
others.  This  view  is  equally  erroneous  with  that  which  regards 
the  Indian  as  a  creature  possessing  the  human  form,  but  divested 
of  all  other  attributes  of  humanity,  and  whose  traits  of  character, 
habits,  modes  of  life,  disposition,  and  savage  customs  disqualify 
him  from  the  exercise  of  all  rights  and  privileges,  even  those  per- 
taining to  life  itself.  Taking  him  as  we  find  him,  at  peace  or  at 


QUALITIES   OP   THE   INDIAN.  105 

war,  at  home  or  abroad,  waiving  all  prejudices  and  laying  aside  all 
partiality,  we  will  [shall]  discover  in  the  Indian  a  subject  for 
thoughtful  study  and  investigation.  In  him  we  will  [shall]  find 
the  representative  of  a  race  whose  origin  is,  and  promises  to  be,  a 
subject  forever  wrapped  in  mystery ;  a  race  incapable  of  being 
judged  by  the  rules  or  laws  applicable  to  any  other  known  race 
of  men ;  one  between  which  and  civilization  there  seems  to  have 
existed  from  time  immemorial  a  determined  and  unceasing  warfare, 
—  a  hostility  so  deep-seated  and  inbred  with  the  Indian  character, 
that  in  the  exceptional  instances  where  the  modes  and  habits  of 
civilization  have  been  reluctantly  adopted,  it  has  been  at  the  sacri- 
fice of  power  and  influence  as  a  tribe,  and  the  more  serious  loss  of 
health,  vigor,  arid  courage  as  individuals." 

"  Inseparable  from  the  Indian  character,  wherever  he  is  to  be 
met  with,  is  his  remarkable  taciturnity,  his  deep  dissimulation,  the 
perseverance  with  which  he  follows  his  plans  of  revenge  or  con- 
quest, his  concealment  and  apparent  lack  of  curiosity,  his  stoical 
courage  when  in  the  power  of  his  enemies,  his  cunning,  his  caution, 
and  last,  but  not  least,  the  wonderful  power  and  subtlety  of  his 
senses.  In  studying  the  Indian  character,  while  shocked  and  dis- 
gusted by  many  of  his  traits  and  customs,  I  find  much  to  be  ad- 
mired, and  still  more  of  deep  and  unvarying  interest.  To  me 
Indian  life,  with  its  attendant  ceremonies,  mysteries,  and  forms,  is  a 
book  of  unceasing  interest.  Grant  that  some  of  its  pages  are  fright- 
ful, and  if  possible  to  be  avoided ;  yet  the  attraction  is  none  the 
weaker.  Study  him,  fight  him,  civilize  him  if  you  can ;  he  remains 
still  the  object  of  your  curiosity,  a  type  of  man  peculiar  and  unde- 
fined, subjecting  himself  to  no  known  law  of  civilization,  contend- 
ing determinedly  against  all  efforts  to  win  him  from  his  chosen 
mode  of  life.  He  stands  in  the  group  of  nations  solitary  and  re- 
served, seeking  alliance  with  none,  mistrusting  and  opposing  the 
advances  of  all.  Civilization  may  and  should  do  much  for  him, 
but  it  can  never  civilize  him.  A  few  instances  to  the  contrary  may 
be  quoted,  but  these  are  susceptible  of  explanation.  No  tribe  en- 
joying its  accustomed  freedom  has  ever  been  induced  to  adopt  a 
civilized  mode  of  life,  —  or,  as  they  express  it,  to  follow  the  white 
man's  road.  At  various  times  certain  tribes  have  forsaken  the 
pleasures  of  the  chase  and  the  excitement  of  the  war-path  for  the 
more  quiet  life  to  be  found  on  the  '  reservation.'  Was  this  course 
adopted  voluntarily  and  from  preference1?  Was  it  because  the 


106  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS    ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

Indian  chose  the  ways  of  his  white  brother,  rather  than  those  in 
which  he  had  been  born  and  bred  1  In  no  single  instance  has  this 
been  true." 

Ouster  proceeds  to  argue  that  a  few  tribes,  wasted  and 
exhausted  by  wars  with  other  tribes  and  the  whites,  and  by 
contact  with  civilization  and  disease,  and  unable  to  cope 
with  more  powerful  tribes  which  are  always  overbearing 
and  domineering,  must  either  become  the  vassals  and  tribu- 
taries of  their  enemies,  or  reluctantly  accept  the  alternative 
of  a  sham  conformity  with  the  whites.  He  says :  — 

The  tribe  must  "  give  up  its  accustomed  haunts,  its  wild  mode  of 
life,  and  nestle  down  under  the  protecting  arm  of  its  former  enemy, 
the  white  man,  and  try,  however  feebly,  to  adopt  his  manner  of  life. 
In  making  this  change  the  Indian  has  to  sacrifice  all  that  is  dear  to 
his  heart ;  he  abandons  the  only  mode  of  life  in  which  he  can  be  a 
warrior  and  win  triumphs  and  honors  worthy  to  be  sought  after ; 
and  in  taking  up  the  pursuits  of  the  white  man  he  does  that  which 
he  has  always  been  taught  from  his  earliest  infancy  to  regard  as  de- 
grading to  his  manhood,  —  to  labor,  to  work  for  his  daily  bread ;  an 
avocation  suitable  only  for  squaws.  :  .  . 

"  To  those  who  advocate  the  application  of  the  laws  of  civiliza- 
tion to  the  Indian,  it  might  be  a  profitable  study  to  investigate  the 
effect  which  such  application  produces  upon  the  strength  of  the 
tribe  as  expressed  in  numbers.  Looking  at  him  as  the  fearless 
hunter,  the  matchless  horseman  and  warrior  of  the  Plains,  where 
Nature  placed  him,  and  contrasting  him  with  the  reservation  In- 
dian, who  is  supposed  to  be  revelling  in  the  delightful  comforts  and 
luxuries  of  an  enlightened  condition,  but  who  in  reality  is  grovel- 
ling in  beggary,  bereft  of  many  of  the  qualities  which  in  his  wild 
state  tended  to  render  him  noble,  and  heir  to  a  combination  of 
vices  partly  his  own,  partly  bequeathed  to  him  from  the  pale  face, 
—  one  is  forced,  even  against  desire,  to  conclude  that  there  is  an 
unending  antagonism  between  the  Indian  nature  and  that  with 
which  his  well-meaning  white  brother  would  endow  him.  Nature 
intended  him  for  a  savage  state ;  every  instinct,  every  impulse  of 
his  soul  inclines  him  to  it.  The  white  race  might  fall  into  a  bar- 
barous state,  and  afterwards,  subjected  to  the  influence  of  civiliza- 


QUALITIES   OP   THE   INDIAN.  107 

tion,  be  reclaimed  and  prosper.  Not  so  the  Indian.  He  cannot  be 
himself  and  be  civilized;  he  fades  away  and  dies.  Cultivation 
such  as  the  white  man  would  give  him  deprives  him  of  his  iden- 
tity. Education,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  seems  to  weaken  rather 
than  strengthen  his  intellect." 

In  confirmation  of  this  last  statement,  Ouster  affirms 
that  the  gift  of  forest  eloquence  is  lost  under  civilization. 
He  asks :  — 

"  Where  do  we  find  any  specimens  of  educated  Indian  eloquence 
comparing  with  that  of  such  native,  untutored  orators  as  Tecuinseh, 
Osceola,  Red-Jacket,  and  Logan,  or  Red-Cloud,  or  Satanta  1  .  .  . 

"  My  firm  conviction,  based  upon  an  intimate  and  thorough  an- 
alysis of  the  habits,  traits  of  character,  and  natural  instinct  of  the 
Indian,  and  strengthened  and  supported  by  the  almost  unanimous 
opinion  of  all  persons  who  have  made  the  Indian  problem  a  study, 
—  and  have  studied  it,  not  from  a  distance,  but  in  immediate  contact 
with  all  the  facts  bearing  thereupon,  —  is  that  the  Indian  cannot  be 
elevated  to  that  great  level  where  he  can  be  induced  to  adopt  any 
policy  or  mode  of  life  varying  from  those  to  which  he  has  ever 
been  accustomed  by  any  method  of  teaching,  argument,  reasoning, 
or  coaxing  which  is  not  preceded  and  followed  closely  in  reserve  by 
a  superior  physical  force.  In  other  words,  the  Indian  is  capable 
of  recognizing  no  controlling  influence  but  that  of  stern  arbitrary 
power.  .  .  . 

"  And  yet  there  are  those  who  argue  that  the  Indian  with  all 
his  lack  of  moral  privileges  is  so  superior  to  the  white  race  as  to 
be  capable  of  being  controlled  in  his  savage  traits  and  customs,  and 
induced  to  lead  a  proper  life,  simply  by  being  politely  requested  to 
do  so."1 

Let  us  quote  a  passage  from  another  intelligent  ob- 
server of  Indian  life,  also  an  accomplished  officer  of  the 
army  of  the  United  States.  The  extract  has  a  touch  of 
romance  about  it,  as  it  presents  a  child  of  Nature  of  the 
other  sex  :  — 

1  My  Life  on  the  Plains  ;  or,  Personal  Experiences  with  Indians.  By 
General  G.  A.  Custer,  U.  S.  A.  1876.  Pages  11,  16,  102,  et  seq. 


108  THE   INDIAN. HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

"  When  a  young  man,  —  new  to  the  plains,  with  a  heart  full  of 
romance,  and  head  stored  with  Cooper's  and  others'  fictions  of 
'  beautiful  Indian  maidens,'  —  I  was  on  the  escort  of  General  S., 
commanding  the  Department,  on  a  long  scout,  or  reconnoissance, 
through  Texas.  One  day,  when  camped  near  what  afterwards  be- 
came Fort  Belknap,  we  were  visited  by  a  then  prominent  chief  of 
the  Northern  Conianches,  Pa-ha-yu-ka,  who  brought  with  him  a 
few  warriors  and  his  family,  —  several  wives  and  one  daughter. 
The  daughter  was  a  vision  of  loveliness,  apparently  about  fourteen, 
but  ripened  by  the  southern  sun  to  perfect  womanhood.  Rather 
below  the  medium  height,  her  form  was  slight  and  lithe,  though 
rounded  into  the  utmost  symmetry.  Her  features  were  regular, 
lips  and  teeth  simply  perfection,  eyes  black,  bright  and  sparkling 
with  fun,  and  the  whole  countenance  beaming  with  good  humor 
and  bewitching  coquetry.  A  tightly-fitting  tunic  of  the  softest 
buckskin,  beautifully  embroidered  with  porcupine  quills,  reaching 
half  way  between  the  hip  and  the  knee,  set  off  to  admiration  her 
rounded  form.  The  bottom  of  the  tunic  was  a  continuous  fringe  of 
thin  buckskin  strings,  from  each  of  which  dangled  a  little  silver 
bell,  not  larger  than  the  cup  of  a  small  acorn.  Her  lower  limbs 
were  encased  in  elaborately  fringed  leggings,  and  her  little  feet  in 
beaded  moccasons  of  elaborate  pattern.  Her  beautiful  hair  was 
plaited  down  her  back  and  adorned  with  huge  silver  buckles.  The 
parting  of  her  hair  was  carefully  marked  with  vermilion  paint,  and 
a  long  gold  or  brass  chain  was  twisted  carelessly  about  her  hair  and 
neck.  What  wonder  if,  with  one  look,  I  literally  tumbled  into 
love  ?  She  saw  my  admiration,  and  with  the  innate  coquetry  of 
the  sex  in  every  clime  and  of  every  people,  met  my  eager  glances 
with  a  thousand  winning  airs  and  graces.  We  could  not  speak ;  but 
love  has  a  language  of  its  own.  I  haunted  that  Indian  camp-fire. 
Neither  duty  nor  hunger  could  tear  me  away  ;  and  it  was  only 
when  the  Indians  retired  for  the  night  that  I  could  return  to  my 
own  tent  and  blankets  to  toss  and  dream  of  this  vision  of  paradise. 
Next  morning  with  the  sun  I  was  again  with  my  fascination.  The 
General  gave  the  Indians  a  beef.  Some  time  after,  a  warrior  came 
and  spoke  to  the  girl.  Rising  from  her  seat,  she  gave  me  a  look  of 
invitation  to  accompany  her.  Proceeding  a  few  yards  into  a  little 
glade,  we  came  to  several  Indians  standing  around  the  slaughtered 
beef,  which  was  turned  on  its  back  and  the  stomach  split  open. 
Taking  a  knife  from  one  of  the  men,  my  '  beautiful  Indian  maiden' 


MILITARY  OFFICERS  ON  THE  INDIAN.  „         109 

plunged  her  lovely  hand  and  rounded  arm  into  the  bowels  of  the 
beast,  and  found  and  cut  off  some  eight  or  ten  feet  of  the  '  marrow 
gut.'  Winding  it  about  her  arm,  she  stepped  on  one  side,  and, 
giving  the  entrail  a  shake,  inserted  one  end  in  her  beautiful  mouth. 
Looking  at  me  with  ineffable  content  and  happiness  expressed  in 
her  beaming  countenance,  she  slowly,  and  without  apparent  mastica- 
tion, swallowed  the  whole  disgusting  mass.  I  returned  sadly  to  my 
tent,  my  ideal  shattered,  my  love  gone ;  and  I  need  hardly  add 
that  this  one  Indian  love-affair  has  satisfied  my  whole  life."  l 

The  military  gentlemen,  honored  officers  of  our  army, 
from  whose  works  I  have  drawn  these  extracts,  are  well  en- 
titled to  be  regarded  as  representatives  in  good  judgment, 
and  as  speaking  from  abundant  knowledge  and  experience, 
of  their  own  profession  in  that  strong  conflict  of  opinion 
which  we  must  recognize  in  later  pages  between  it  and 
the  advocates  of  an  exclusive  peace-policy  with  'the  In- 
dians. General  Ouster  and  Colonel  Dodge,  humane  and 
well-balanced  men,  present  to  us  in  harrowing  descriptions 
and  with  all  too  vivid  illustrations  the  atrocities  of  Indian 
warfare.  The  former  tells  the  story  of  such  tragedies  as 
the  "  Philip  Kearney  Massacre "  and  the  "  Kidder  Massa- 
cre." Remembering  that  he  fell  in  the  flower  of  his  years, 
—  after  his  patriotic  career  and  eminent  services  to  his 
country,  —  in  a  deadly  and  equally  overwhelming  disaster, 
we  give  just  weight  to  his  testimony.  Clearly,  and  for 
reasons  which  he  states  with  full  force,  he  did  not  believe 
that  the  Indian  could  be  lifted  into  the  state  of  civilization, 
refinement,  and  full  humanity.  But  we  must  not  by  antici- 
pation prejudice  tbis  great  issue. 

In  the  abounding  literature  which  we  have  gathered  and 
are  to  leave  to  posterity,  concerning  the  red  man  and  his 
experiences  with  the  white  man,  there  is  a  large  variety 
of  stern  and  sober  history,  of  poetry  and  romance,  of  en- 
gaging and  instructive,  of  repulsive  and  revolting  matter, 

1  The  Plains  of  the  Great  West  and  their  Inhabitants.  By  Richard 
Irving  Dodge,  Lieut. -Colonel  U.  S.  A.  New  York.  1877.  Pages  342-43. 


110  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

fact  and  fiction,  boasting  and  lament,  stately  volumes  of 
legislative,  cabinet,  and  war  bureaus,  and  pages  filled  with 
contemplative  and  serious  wisdom.  In  reading,  for  infor- 
mation or  pleasure,  a  selection  from  this  mass  of  books  and 
documents,  we  have  to  remind  ourselves  that  white  men 
have  dealt  with,  visited,  and  treated  the  Indians  in  very 
different  ways  and  for  very  different  ends  and  purposes,  and 
so  have  formed  very  different  opinions  and  made  very  dif- 
ferent reports  of  them.  Thus,  besides  the  poets  who  give 
us  their  dreams  and  fancies  of  Indians  and  Indian  life,  our 
informants  and  authorities  about  them  comprise  this  wide 
category, — travellers,  tourists,  and  adventurous  pleasure- 
seekers  among  the  Indians,  traders  with  them,  missionaries 
to  them,  military  officers  watching  or  fighting  with  them, 
Government  superintendents  or  agents  for  their  help  and 
protection,  and  settlers  upon  the  successive  frontier  lines. 
We  may  well  expect  to  find  not  only  variety  and  variance,  but 
discordance,  and  wholly  incongruous  and  inconsistent  repre- 
sentations of  Indians  and  Indian  life,  coming  from  such 
miscellaneous  authorities.  One  who  proposes  to  make  a 
thorough  study  of  the  Indian  as  known  to  the  white  man, 
will  find  it  helpful  to  divide  all  the  enormous  mass  of  litera- 
ture on  the  subject  under  six  very  distinct  classes,  —  guided 
by  this  simple  suggestion,  that  different  persons  coming  into 
contact  with  the  Indians,  for  very  different  purposes,  on  dif- 
ferent errands,  and  under  different  relations,  see  them  differ- 
ently, use  them  differently,  and  so  report  them  differently. 
First  come  the  poems,  —  works  of  pure  fiction  and  fancy, 
written  in  every  case  by  those  who  never  had  any  intercourse 
whatever  with  the  wild  men,  and  which  always  mislead, 
though  the  romance  may  please  us.  Second,  those  who 
have  lived  on  the  frontiers,  amid  Indian  raids  and  captivi- 
ties, massacres,  butcheries,  and  tortures ;  who  know  the 
Indian  yell,  his  hideous  visage,  and  his  tomahawk.  Third, 
the  missionary,  who  has  his  point  of  view,  and  makes  his 
report.  Fourth,  the  Indian  or  Government  agent,  who 


ROMANTIC   VIEWS   OF   THE   INDIAN.  Ill 

often,  not  always,  —  for  there  have  been  honorable  and 
noble  exceptions,  —  finds  himself  the  only  honest  man 
among  a  crew  of  rascals  and  knaves,  and  who  guards 
against  their  swindling  him  by  swindling  them.  Fifth,  the 
army  officer,  who  has  to  follow  the  trail  of  the  ambushed 
foe,  and  to  do  the  fighting.  And,  lastly,  there  are  annually 
numerous  wild  rovers,  pleasure  tourists,  hunters,  noblemen 
from  abroad,  who  go  to  the  Plains  to  chase  the  buffalo. 
These  have  a  free  and  happy  time  with  the  Indians,  being 
companionable  and  lavishly  generous.  When  the  Duke 
Alexis,  by  President  Grant's  order,  was  accompanied  by 
General  Ouster  in  his  rush  over  the  wild  plains,  he  of 
course  had  a  good  time,  and  thought  the  Indians  noble 
fellows. 

L  Of  course  the  Indian,  his  life  and  surroundings,  are  favor- 
ite themes  of  romance.  These  have  been  already  wrought 
into  the  fancies  and  charms  of  poetry.  Such  uses  they  will 
serve  more  richly  in  the  future.  The  less  we  see  and  know 
of  real  Indians,  the  easier  will  it  be  to  make  and  read 
poems  about  them.  The  themes  of  epics  will  yet  be  found 
in  them,  and  distinctive  American  literature  for  time  to 
come  will  draw  inspiration,  eloquence,  and  fascination  from 
the  heroes  and  the  fortunes,  it  may  be,  of  a  vanished  race, 
—  vanished  with  the  primeval  forests  and  the  wild  game. 
And  poetry  and  romance  have  their  license.  Stern  history, 
however,  has  got  the  start  of  them,  and  will  always  be  able 
to  tell  the  true  story  in  sober  prose.  Cooper's  novels,  the 
poems  and  ballads  of  Campbell,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  and 
others  will  secure  to  romance  the  holding  of  its  own 
with  the  traditions  of  truth.  Whittier,  in  his  preface  to 
his  "  Mogg  Megone,"  naively  says,  that  in  portraying  the 
Indian  character  he  has  followed,  as  closely  as  his  story 
would  admit,  the  rough  but  natural  delineations  of  Church, 
Mayliew,  Charlevoix,  and  Roger  Williams  (that  is,  of  those 
who  had  actual  knowledge  and  converse  with  the  Indians) ; 
and,  in  so  doing,  he  has  "  necessarily  discarded  much  of  the 


112  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  ETC. 

romance  which  poets  and  novelists  have  thrown  around 
the  ill-fated  red  man."  (/ 

Of  course  common-sense,  after  all,  must  be  trusted  on 
such  themes  to  draw  the  line  not  only  between  opinions 
and  theories,  but  even  in  the  statement  and  interpretation 
of  facts,  as  they  come  from  romancers,  sentimentalists, 
idealists,  and  philanthropists,  or  from  literal,  practical, 
matter-of-fact  persons,  speaking  from  experience.  The 
familiar  line,  hackneyed  by  frequent  quotation, — 

"  When  wild  in  woods  the  noble  savage  ran,"  - 

would  have  a  different  meaning  according  to  the  circum- 
stances under  which  one  happened  to  meet  him,  —  whether 
he  was  running  to  you  or  from  you.  "  The  stoic  of  the  woods, 
the  man  without  a  tear,"  as  a  poet  has  drawn  him,  was 
after  all,  like  most  of  us,  a  many-sided  being.  Much  wise 
and  well-balanced  judgment,  poised  fairly,  has  been  uttered 
of  the  savage  in  this  sentence :  "  His  virtues  do  not  reach 
our  standard,  and  his  vices  exceed  our  standard."  It  seems 
to  have  been  with  the  Indians,  as  Tacitus  says  it  was  with 
our  German  ancestors,  that  one  half  of  their  time  was 
spent  in  hunting  and  war,  and  the  other  half  in  sloth  and 
play.  Two  constraining  reflections  must  always  guide  our 
thoughts  about  them.  However  degraded,  they  had  the 
divine  endowment  from  Him  —  as  Southey  says  — 

"Who  in  the  lowest  depths  of  being  framed 
The  imperishable  mind." 

Again,  the  Indians  are  a  people  with  a  history  but 
without  a  historian.  The  Jesuit  Father  Lafitau,  a  man  of 
great  learning  in  classic  lore,  and  a  most  intelligent,  can- 
did, and  discerning  observer  of  savage  life,  published  in 
1724  the  fruits  of  his  patient  investigations  in  two  stately 
quartos,  abundantly  illustrated  with  engravings.  The  title 
of  his  work, —  "Mceurs  des  Sauvages  Ame*ricains,  Com- 
pare*es  aux  Moeurs  des  Premiers  Temps,"  —  expresses  the 


INDIAN   STATE   AND   ROYALTY.  113 

method  by  which  he  has  treated  his  theme.  Believing  the 
savages  to  have  shared  in  the  disaster  of  the  "fall"  of  our 
first  human  parents,  he  finds  among  them  the  traces  of  an 
original  revelation,  with  its  corruptions  and  steady  deterio- 
ration ;  and  he  illustrates  all  their  customs  by  parallelisms 
from  classic  history  and  the  usages  prevailing  among  other 
barbarous  peoples.  He  follows  this  illustrative  method 
through  all  the  ideas,  superstitions,  observances,  feasts, 
sacrifices,  and  bacchanalian  orgies  of  the  savages,  as  hav- 
ing an  intimate  affinity  with  those  of  other  peoples  of  our 
fallen  race  in  all  ancient  times.  Still,  he  is  very  indig- 
nant with  the  romancing  Baron  La  Hontan  and  others,  who, 
"  seeing  among  the  savages  neither  temple,  altars,  idols, 
nor  regular  worship,  very  unadvisedly  concluded  that  their 
spirits  did  not  go  further  than  their  senses ;  and  too  lightly 
pronounced  that,  living  as  the  beasts  without  knowledge  of 
another  life,  they  paid  no  divine  honor  to  anything  visible 
or  invisible,  made  their  God  of  their  belly,  and  bounded  all 
their  happiness  within  the  present  life." 

Doubtless  one  misleading  element  of  our  notions  of  the 
red  men,  as  they  first  appear  in  our  history,  comes  from 
the  early  use  of  the  names,  the  titles,  and  the  state  of  royalty 
as  attached  to  forest  chieftains,  the  formalities  and  etiquette 
to  be  observed  with  them.  This  is  the  more  strange,  as  those 
who  first  used  such  high  terms  of  language  had  known  real 
potentates  and  real  courts,  and  were  well  aware  that  such 
were  characterized  by  personal  cleanliness  and  by  an  ex- 
cess of  apparel  and  draperies  rather  than  by  an  entire 
lack  of  them.  Good  Roger  Williams  frankly  tells  us 
about  the  filthy,  smoky  dens  and  the  vermin-covered  per- 
sons of  the  natives,  and  of  their  disgusting  food  and  hab- 
its, wholly  unconscious  of  common  decency.  Yet  even  he 
freely  scatters  about  the  titles  of  king,  queen,  and  prince, 
of  court  and  state,  among  them.  The  element  of  the  incon- 
gruous and  the  ridiculous  in  this  is  well  brought  out  when 
from  worthy  old  John  Smith  in  Virginia,  downwards,  we 

8 


114  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

have  the  titles  and  the  state  offset  by  literal  descriptions  in 
plain  English,  and  sometimes  by  "  cuts  and  etchings "  on 
his  pages.  Indian  names  with  an  English  alias  present 
this  incongruousness,  thus :  "  The  chieftain  Munashum, 
alias  Nimrod."  The  romantic  story  of  Pocahontas,  as  it 
developed  so  luxuriously  from  its  original  germ  in  the 
successive  narrations  of  the  same  incident  by  the  "Ad- 
miral," is  sadly  reduced  by  comparing  the  different  edi- 
tions of  his  narrative. 

From  this  point  of  view  it  is  interesting  to  compare  some 
pages  of  two  of  our  most  able  and  faithful  New  England 
historians,  writing  at  the  same  time  and  on  the  same 
themes,  — Dr.  Palfrey,  in  his  "  History  of  New  England," 
and  Governor  Arnold,  in  his  "  History  of  Rhode  Island." 
It  is  suggestive  and  really  amusing  to  note  what  contrasted 
views,  tones,  and  ways  of  speaking  of  and  representing  the 
aborigines  of  New  England  are  characteristic  of  those 
writers.  Dr.  Palfrey  regards  them,  their  habits,  and  man- 
ners with  absolute  disgust.  To  him  they  were  little  above 
vermin, — abject,  wretched,  filthy,  treacherous,  perfidious, 
and  fiendish.  For  them  existence  had  but  a  questionable 
value.  He  scorned  the  attempt  to  invest  them  with  ro- 
mance, and  ridiculed  the  attributing  to  them  the  qualities 
of  barbaric  forest  state  and  royalty.^  Governor  Arnold, 
however,  fondly  loved  to  retain  the  old  romance  of  the 
noble  and  kingly  savage,  with  his  wild-wood  court,  his 
councillors  and  cabinet,  his  wilderness  chivalry,  with  the 
y  free,  pure  air  around  him,  and  the  abounding  lakes  and 
streams,  suggesting  at  least  their  uses  for  frequent  and  ef- 
fective ablutionsX  In  keeping  with  thesp, — their  divergent 
appreciation  of  the  same  phenomena, — Dr.  Palfrey  sets 
before  us  the  squalor  and  wretchedness  of  the  Indians, 
their  shiftlessness  and  incapacity,  their  improvidence, 
beastliness,  and  forlorn  debasement ;  while  Governor  Ar- 
nold dwells  bewitchingly  upon  their  grand  manhood,  their 
constancy,  magnanimity,  and  dignity.  When  the  friendly 


INDIAN  STATE   AND  ROYALTY.  115 

chief  Massasoit  was  suffering  with  a  fever  and  was  un- 
der the  hands  of  his  powwows,  Palfrey  and  Arnold  both 
describe  a  visit  made  to  him  by  Winslow  and  Hopkins, 
of  Plymouth.  Arnold  says  the  monarch  received  his  Pu- 
ritan visitors  at  "his  seat"  at  Mount  Hope.  Palfrey  says 
that  the  "  monarch,"  with  his  vermin-covered  bear-skin, 
had  no  food  to  offer  the  envoys,  that  their  lodging  in  his 
"stye"  was  of  the  most  comfortless  description,  and  that 
they  had  a  distressing  experience  of  the  poverty  and  filth 
of  Indian  hospitality.  More  remarkable  still  is  the  con- 
trast of  estimate  between  the  two  historians  of  the  re- 
ligion of  these  same  Indians.  Arnold  says :  "  Here  we 
find  the  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  enter- 
tained by  a  barbarous  race,  who  affirmed  that  they  re- 
ceived it  from  their  ancestors.  They  were  ignorant  of 
revelation;  yet  here  was  Plato's  great  problem  solved  in 
the  American  wilderness,  and  believed  by  all  the  abo- 
rigines of  the  West."  l  But  Dr.  Palfrey  writes  :  "  The 
New  England  savage  was  not  the  person  to  have  discov- 
ered what  the  vast  reach  of  thought  of  Plato  and  Cicero 
could  not  attain."  2  It  is  but  proper  to  add,  that  these 
works  being  in  press  at  the  same  time,  the  writers  were 
not  controverting  each  other. 

Yet  there  was  a  touch  of  nobleness  in  the  words  of  the 
royal  chief  Miantonomo,  accepting  the  dignity  which  the 
English  ascribed  to  him.  When,  in  King  Philip's  .war, 
Miantonomo  and  another  sachem,  with  some  chief  council- 
lors, had  been  taken  prisoners  at  Potuxit,  a  squad  of  com- 
mon Englishmen  put  him  under  question.  The  "  Old  In- 
dian Chronicle  " 3  tells  us:  "  The  said  Miantonomo's  carriage 
was  strangely  proud  and  lofty.  Being  examined  why  he 
did  foment  that  war,  he  would  make  no  other  reply  to  any 
interrogatories  but  this :  4  That  he  was  born  a  prince,  and 

1  Arnold's  History  of  Rhode  Island,  vol.  i.  p.  78. 

2  Palfrey's  History  of  New  England,  vol.  i.  p.  49. 
8  Page  231. 


116  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

if  princes  came  to  speak  with  him  he  would  answer ;  but 
none  present  being  such,  he  thought  himself  obliged,  in 
honor,  to  hold  his  tongue  and  not  hold  discourse  with  such 
persons  below  his  birth  and  quality.' ' 

Practically,  however,  the  truth  must  be  told,  that,  in  spite 
of  all  the  epithets  of  royalty  and  state  which  our  own  Puri- 
tan ancestors  connected  with  the  Indians,  as  a  matter  of 
fact  they  very  soon  came  to  regard  and  treat  the  savages 
as  a  kind  of  vermin  of  the  woods,  combining  all  the  offen- 
sive and  hideous  qualities  and  subtleties  of  snakes,  wolves, 
bears,  wild-cats,  skunks,  and  panthers,  with  a  bloodthirsti- 
ness  and  ferocity  exceeding  them  all.  This  was  the  estimate 
of  the  noble  Indian  by  those  who  had  heard  his  yells  and 
felt  his  tomahawk  in  actual  conflict. 

The  subject  of  the  languages  spoken  by  our  aborigines  is  too 
comprehensive  and  intricate  a  one  for  discussion  here.  Our 
authorities  differ  widely  on  this  theme,  as  to  the  number  of 
the  vocabularies,  which  of  them  are  languages,  which  are 
dialects,  their  constructions,  root-terms,  inflections,  etc. 
They  used  very  long  words,  with  affixes  and  suffixes  of 
many  syllables,  and  of  many  letters,  especially  consonants, 
in  each  syllable.  Cotton  Mather  said  some  of  their  words 
had  been  growing  ever  since  the  confusion  of  tongues  at 
Babel.  It  must  have  required  some  intellectual  vigor  and  a 
grasp  of  memory  in  Indian  children  to  master  their  speech. 
It  is  doubtful  if  any  affinity  can  be  detected  in  their  vocab- 
ularies or  in  the  structure  of  their  languages  with  those  of 
any  other  continent  of  the  globe.  As  might  be  expected, 
their  languages  are  rich  and  copious  as  relating  to  common 
life  and  common  things,  objects,  matters  of  sense,  but  very 
deficient  and  scant  for  the  processes  and  expression  of 
mental  and  spiritual  activity,  conceptions,  and  abstractions. 
For  instance,  the  speech  of  the  Delawares  was  found  to 
have  ten  very  different  names  for  a  bear,  according  to  age, 
sex,  etc.  The  limited  resources  of  their  speech  explain  to 
us  the  rhetorical  and  figurative  character  of  Indian  elo- 


INDIAN  LANGUAGES.  117 

quence,  so  abounding  in  images,  pictures,  and  symbols.  It 
was  this  paucity  of  words  and  expressions  suited  to  their 
use  in  moral  and  religious  teachings  that  greatly  impeded 
the  work  of  missionaries  among  the  savages.  Doubtless, 
in  many  of  the  Treaty  Councils  with  them  speeches  have 
been  very  erroneously  conveyed,  and  covenants  greatly 
mystified. 

Of  the  power  and  graces  of  Indian  oratory  the  evidences 
and  the  illustrations  are  abundant.  The  famous  speech  of 
Logan,  even  if  apocryphal,  is  ranked  among  the  gems  of 
eloquence.  When  his  fellow-chief  Cornstock,  in  Cresap's 
war,  1774,  held  his  interview  with  Lord  Dunmore,  Colonel 
Wilson,  who  was  present,  thus  describes  the  scene :  — 

"  When  Cornstock  arose,  he  was  in  nowise  confused  or  daunted, 
but  spoke  in  a  distinct  and  audible  voice,  without  stammering  or 
repetition,  and  with  peculiar  emphasis.  His  looks  while  addressing 
Governor  Dunmore  were  truly  grand  and  majestic,  yet  graceful  and 
attractive.  I  have  heard  the  first  orators  in  Virginia,— Patrick  Henry 
and  Eichard  Lee ;  but  never  have  I  heard  one  whose  powers  of  de- 
livery surpassed  those  of  Cornstock." 

Among  the  efforts  of  labor  and  zeal  which  have  been 
spent  by  Europeans  —  generally,  too,  in  unselfish  and  self- 
sacrificing  toils  —  for  the  benefit  of  the  Indians,  might  well 
be  mentioned  with  special  emphasis  the  task-work  given  to 
the  acquisition  and  comparison  of  Indian  vocabularies,  for 
purposes  of  speech,  instruction,  and  translation.  It  is  one 
thing  to  give  oneself  to  the  study  of  a  difficult  language  for 
the  sake  of  being  able  to  master  the  treasures  of  literature 
which  it  may  contain.  It  is  quite  another  thing  to  catch 
the  words  and  modulations,  the  breathings  and  gruntings  of 
a  spoken  tongue  without  alphabet  or  symbol,  to  reduce  it  to 
written  forms,  and  to  make  it  a  vehicle  for  presenting  the 
literature  of  other  languages.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  the 
earliest  Europeans  who  undertook  to  put  into  writing  the  first 
Indian  words  which  they  heard,  seem  to  have  aimed  to  crowd 


118  THE   INDIAN. HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

into  them  as  many  letters  as  possible.  The  first  mention 
of  a  word  of  the  Dakota  or  Sioux  language  in  a  European 
book  is  said  to  be  one  which  Hennepin  wrote  in  his  Jour- 
nal, on  his  being  taken  by  a  war-party  on  the  Upper  Mis- 
sissippi. The  savages  were  angry  at  seeing  him  read 
his  breviary,  and  fiercely  spoke  a  word  which  Hennepin 
writes  OuaJcanche!  This  word  now  appears  in  the  Da- 
kota vocabulary  as  Wakan-de,  meaning  magical,  or  super- 
natural.1 

In  the  earliest  intercourse  between  the  Europeans  and  the 
Indians,  a  medium  was  established  between  them  by  meet- 
ing each  other  in  speech  and  in  sign-language,  as  we  should 
say,  half  way.  Father  Lafitau  has,  with  his  usual  intelli- 
gence, described  the  process  as  follows  :  — 

"  When  two  peoples  who  speak  languages  so  widely  unlike  as 
those  of  the  Iroquois  and  the  French  conie  together  for  the  ends  of 
traffic,  or  for  mutual  service  in  defence,  they  are  compelled,  equally 
on  either  side,  to  approach  each  in  the  other's  language,  in  order  to 
make  themselves  understood.  This  is  difficult  enough  in  the  begin- 
ning ;  but  at  last,  with  a  little  practice,  they  come  to  communicate 
their  thoughts,  partly  by  gestures  and  partly  by  some  corrupt  words 
which  belong  to  neither  language,  because  they  are  mere  blunder- 
ings,  and  compose  a  discourse  without  rhyme  or  reason.  Still,  by 
practice,  fixed  significations  are  assigned  to  these  terms,  and  they 
serve  the  end  proposed  by  them.  Thus  is  formed  a  language  or 
jargon  of  scant  authority  in  the  dictionary  and  confined  only  to 
intercourse.  The  Frenchman  thinks  he  is  using  the  language  of 
the  savages,  the  savage  that  he  is  speaking  that  of  the  French,  and 
they  understand  enough  to  serve  their  needs.  During  the  first 
months  of  my  stay  at  Sault-Saint- Louis  the  savages  used  this  jargon 
to  me,  supposing  that,  being  a  Frenchman,  I  ought  to  understand  it. 
But  I  understood  so  little  of  it,  that,  when  I  began  to  apprehend  a 
little  more  clearly  the  principles  of  their  natural  speech,  I  was 
obliged  to  ask  them  to  speak  as  they  do  to  each  other,  and  I  then 
entered  much  better  into  their  thoughts." 2 

1  Collections  of  Minnesota  Historical  Society,  i.  308. 

2  Mceurs  des  Sauvages,  vol.  ii.  p.  475-76. 


LABOR  ON  INDIAN  VOCABULARIES.  119 

The  Father  remarks,  however,  that  though  the  savages 
had  so  many  different  languages,  they  had  nearly  the  same 
range  of  mind  and  view,  the  same  style  of  thought,  and  the 
same  modes  for  expressing  themselves.  Their  languages 
had  a  dearth  of  such  terms  as  the  missionaries  needed  to 
use  in  conveying  to  them  religious  lessons  and  abstract 
truths.  This  difficulty  the  Father  says  was  not  surmounted 
by  missionaries  who  had  lived  among  the  savages  for  very 
many  years,  and  who  candidly  confessed,  that  though  their 
disciples  perfectly  understood  them  on  other  subjects,  they 
could  not  satisfy  themselves  that  their  religious  instruction 
was  really  apprehended. 

Fettered  and  obstructed  by  such  disabling  conditions,  we 
can  perhaps  appreciate  the  almost  overwhelming  difficulties 
of  the  task  by  which  missionaries  among  the  Indians  have 
sought  to  construct  vocabularies  of  the  various  native  tongues 
for  the  purpose  of  mastering  forms  of  speech,  not  merely 
for  holding  common  intercourse  with  them,  but  for  con- 
veying to  them  the  knowledge  of  the  truths  of  revealed 
religion,  instruction  in  spiritual  things,  in  virtues,  in  tran- 
scendant  verities,  and  in  ecclesiastical  obedience.  References 
to  further  experiences  of  toil  and  ill  success  in  this  devoted 
work  will  engage  our  attention  under  another  subject  in 
this  volume.  Our  imaginations  hardly  need  any  quickening 
or  stimulating  to  bring  before  us  the  patient  forms  of  the 
old  missionaries,  as  in  such  hours  as  they  could  rescue 
from  the  tumults  and  annoyances  of  Indian  village  life, 
they  crawled  into  their  lonely  lodges,  and,  when  paper  was 
too  precious  a  luxury  for  such  use,  took  their  prepared  sec- 
tions of  birch-bark,  and,  with  ink  extemporized  from  forest 
juice  or  moistened  charcoals,  essayed  to  construct  a  vocabu- 
lary of  a  savage  dialect.  Vast  numbers  of  these  tentative 
essays  in  a  rude  philology  have  perished.  Primers,  prayers, 
Church  offices,  the  Pater  Noster,  the  Creed,  and  the  Com- 
mandments have,  after  a  fashion,  been  set  forth  in  these 
vocabularies  in  sounds  which  have  long  since  died  on  the 


120  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

air.  Enough  of  them  remain,  in  manuscript  and  print,  to 
bear  testimony  to  us  of  the  zeal  and  love  which  were  poured 
into  them,  and  to  make  us  grieve  again  over  the  penalty  of 
the  "  Confusion  of  Tongues." 

In  the  light  of  our  best  means  of  knowledge  of  the  past, 
with  what  we  infer  from  fact,  and  our  observations  of  the 
present,  as  regards  the  aborigines  of  our  continent,  proba- 
bly we  should  not  widely  err  in  resting  in  this  conclusion, — 
that  the  North  American  Indian,  when  first  seen  and  known 
by  Europeans,  stood  about  midway  upon  the  scale  of  hu- 
manity, as  then  divided  and  filled  over  our  globe  by  grada- 
tions of  beings  belonging  to  our  race.  Perhaps  we  should 
place  the  Indian  somewhat  favorably  this  side  of  the  middle 
of  that  scale.  Certainly  there  were  two  hundred  years  ago, 
and  probably  there  are  to-day,  as  many  representatives  of 
our  common  humanity  standing  below  him  as  above  him. 
This  statement  is  intended  to  cover  general  conditions, 
stage  of  development,  possession  and  exercise  of  human 
faculties,  resources  of  life,  appliances,  social  relations,  and 
the  common  experiences  of  existence. 

We  have  not  to  go  very  far  back  in  the  centuries,  to  find 
for  our  own  ancestors  naked  and  painted  men  and  women, 
burrowing  in  caves,  without  fields  or  flocks,  and  living  by 
the  chance  growths  of  Nature.  It  has  been  pertly  said  that 
"  the  European  is  but  a  whitewashed  savage ; "  and  many 
among  civilized  scenes  have  lost  both  the  external  and  the 
internal  tokens  of  a  release  from  barbarism. 

There  is  one  special  and  painful  matter — most  harrow- 
ing if  it  were  pursued  into  details  —  to  which  we  must  give 
some  place  in  forming  our  estimate  of  the  nature  and  char- 
acter of  the  Indian :  it  is  the  hideous  and  revolting  cruelty 
manifested  in  his  savagism.  The  scalping-knife  is  the  sym- 
bol of  the  Indian  warrior,  as  the  sword  and  the  rifle  are  of  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  civilized  soldier.  But  there  is  something 
to  us  supremely  hideous  in  the  use  of  the  scalping-knife 
and  its  companion  weapon,  the  tomahawk.  The  practice  of 


THE  FEROCITY  OF  THE  SAVAGE.          121 

scalping  a  victim  seems  to  have  been  universal  among  our 
aborigines.  It  has  been  a  matter  of  question  whether  the 
practice  was  original  with  and  peculiar  to  them.  It  has 
been  affirmed  that  the  wild  hordes  of  Huns  scalped  their 
victims.  Lafitau  finds  parallelisms  of  the  practice  among 
the  pagans  of  the  Old  World.  Niles,  in  his  "  History  of 
French  and  Indian  Wars,"  makes,  I  think,  the  utterly  un- 
warranted assertion  that  the  French  initiated  the  Indians 
into  the  habit.  But  they  do  not  appear  to  have  needed 
any  teaching  from  civilized  men  in  this  or  in  any  other  shape 
or  ingenuity  of  excessive  and  needless  cruelty.  They  took 
to  it  and  delighted  in  it  as  of  the  prompting  of  nature  and 
instinct,  and  it  became,  if  we  may  so  use  the  word,  a  part 
of  their  religion. 

Now  what  type  of  nature  or  character  is  indicated  in 
this  mastering  and  ferocious  passion  for  inflicting  muti- 
lations and  torture  on  helpless  victims  ?  The  scalp  was 
seized  and  preserved  as  a  trophy.  It  was  worn  as  a  per- 
sonal ornament.  The  number  of  scalps  which  a  warrior 
could  count  as  taken  by  his  own  hand  marked  as  it  were 
the  degrees  of  honor  and  renown  which  he  had  reached  and 
won,  as  degrees  are  graded  in  our  lodges  and  commanderies 
of  Masonic  orders.  Before  they  had  edged  tools  of  metal, 
the  savage  skill  had  sharpened  stones  or  fish-bones  so 
that  they  would  sever  the  skin  of  the  top-lock,  whether 
of  man,  woman,  or  child.  The  dismal  trophy  would  be 
stretched  upon  a  wicker  frame,  tanned,  and  dried;  and, 
after  being  a  part  of  the  ensigns  displayed  in  his  lodge, 
and  worn  as  a  trinket,  it  was  buried  with  the  warrior  in  his 
grave  as  a  sort  of  Charon's  penny  for  the  fee  on  his  voyage 
to  the  other  shore.  Several  trustworthy  persons,  most 
familiar  by  long  and  intimate  converse  with  the  red  men, 
have  testified  that  the  Indians  have  a  very  suggestive  super- 
stition on  this  subject,  though  there  is  110  evidence  that  it 
is  universal  among  them.  They  are  said  to  believe  that  if 
a  body  —  whether  of  white  or  red  man,  friend  or  foe  —  is 


122"  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  ETC. 

deprived  of  the  scalp-lock  before  burial,  the  soul  that  ani- 
mated the  body  is  forbidden  all  entrance  upon  the  Happy 
Hunting  Grounds,  all  share  in  the  life  hereafter.  In  con- 
firmation of  this,  we  are  told  of  the  eagerness  shown  by  the 
Indian  warrior  to  obtain  the  scalp  of  the  slain,  as  if  it  in- 
sured for  him  the  greater  excommunication ;  and  also  of 
the  risks  which  they  will  run  to  reclaim  the  bodies  of  their 
fallen  friends  on  the  battle-field,  to  save  them  from  the  fatal 
knife.  But  whether  we  regard  the  scalping-knife  as  the  in- 
strument of  a  wanton  cruelty,  or  as  darkly  associated  with 
a  revengeful  superstition,  in  either  view  of  it,  it  is  the  sym- 
bol of  the  barbarity  of  savagism. 

There  are  two  passing  hints  to  be  dropped  on  this  matter, 
if  so  be  that  any  one  may  regard  them  as  relieving  its  hor- 
ror. First,  the  Indian  warrior  magnanimously  dressed  and 
elevated  the  crowning  tuft  of  hair  on  his  own  head,  so  as  to 
make  it  every  way  convenient  to  the  clutch  and  knife  of 
his  enemy.  Second,  we  must  admit  —  shall  we  say,  to  our 
shame  ?  —  that  the  white  man,  after  he  had  become  skilled 
in  the  ways  of  Indian  warfare,  did  not  scruple  to  adopt  the 
red  man's  practice  of  scalping  the  dead.  There  are  official 
papers  preserved  on  our  State  files,  in  which  our  magis- 
trates offered  bounties  for  Indian  scalps  to  their  own  sol- 
diers and  to  our  red  allies ;  and  these  papers  show  a 
tariff  of  prices  for  the  tuft  from  the  head  of  a  man,  a  wo- 
man, or  a  child.  The  bounty  for  a  scalp  to  a  regular  sol- 
dier was  ten  pounds ;  to  a  volunteer,  twenty  pounds ;  to 
patrol  parties,  fifty  pounds.  More  than  all,  these  bounties 
were  claimed,  paid,  and  receipted.  An  heroic  woman  of 
New  Hampshire,  Hannah  Dustin,  received  payment  for  ten, 
which  she  had  taken  off  with  her  own  hand.  More  notewor- 
thy still  is  the  fact,  that  while  the  benevolent  and  pacific 
William  Penn,  the  founder  of  Pennsylvania,  had  declared 
the  person  of  an  Indian  "  sacred,"  never  to  be  harmed,  his 
own  grandson,  when  succeeding  to  the  government,  in  the 
stress  of  Indian  warfare,  offered,  in  1764,  in  a  proclamation, 


TORTURING   OF  VICTIMS.  123 

this  tariff  of  prices  for  Indian  scalps :  for  a  male  scalp, 
$134;  for  that  of  a  boy  under  ten,  $130;  for  that  of  a 
female,  $50.  All  that  we  can  say  of  this  self-degradation  of 
the  white  man  —  civilized,  Christian  —  to  the  barbarism  of 
the  red  man  is,  that  he  was  swift  to  learn  and  imitate 
all  ill  examples ;  and  that  he  adopted  scalping  simply  as 
one  of  the  elements  of  wilderness  warfare,  like  the  lurking 
in  ambushed  thickets  and  ravines,  and  skulking  behind  a 
tree  when  firing  his  piece. 

Again :  shrinking  from  harrowing  details,  but  for 
fidelity  of  view  recognizing  the  truth,  we  must  take  note 
also  of  the  hellish  ingenuities  practised  by  the  savages  in 
the  mutilation  and  torture  of  the  bodies  of  their  victims 
and  prisoners.  All  the  taught  skill  which  the  anatomist 
can  acquire  with  the  scalpel,  in  dealing  with  the  human 
body,  could  not  have  helped  the  Indian  in  his  methods  of 
drawing  out,  prolonging,  and  intensifying  the  pangs  and 
agonies  of  his  helpless  foe.  He  seems  to  have  known  by 
instinct  and  by  practice  where  were  the  quick  points  of 
keenest  sensation,  the  order  in  which  the  nerves  would 
quiver  most  torturingly,  where  fire  would  twinge  the 
muscle,  and  how  he  might  sap  the  life-currents  so  that 
they  would  most  delay  the  blessing  of  unconsciousness. 
The  preliminaries  of  the  stake  were  found  in  the  fun 
and  revelry  provided  for  the  squaws  and  the  pappoo- 
ses,  when  the  destined  victim  ran  the  gantlet,  with  its 
mocking  jeers  and  its  showering  blows.  We  can  well 
credit  the  repeated  assertions  of  exposed  frontier  fight- 
ers and  soldiers,  that  it  is  a  habit  among  them  to  re- 
serve the  last  charge  of  their  rifles,  or  a  secret  pocket 
pistol,  that  they  may  terminate  their  own  life  when  they 
know  the  game  is  over  with  them,  to  escape  the  dread 
fate. 

If  it  will  at  all  relieve  the  savage  of  the  charge  of  utter 
inhumanity  in  this  respect,  it  should  be  mentioned  that 
it  is  a  part  of  his  education  to  prepare  himself  to  en- 


124  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS  ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  ETC. 

dure   as  much  of  physical  torture  as  he  himself  inflicts. 
Lafitau  writes:  — 

"  This  heroism  is  real,  and  is  born  of  a  grand  and  noble  cour- 
age. That  which  we  admire  in  the  martyrs  of  the  primitive 
Church,  and  which  in  them  was  the  work  of  grace  and  miracle, 
is  nature  in  the  savages,  and  comes  from  the  vigor  of  their 
spirit.  The  Indians  seem  to  prepare  themselves  for  this  from 
the  most  tender  age.  Their  children  have  been  observed  to  press 
their  naked  arms  against  each  other,  and  put  burning  cinders  be- 
tween them,  defying  each  other's  fortitude  in  bearing  the  pain. 
I  myself  saw  a  child  of  five  or  six  years  old,  who,  having  been 
severely  burnt  by  some  boiling  water  accidentally  thrown  upon  it, 
sang  its  death-song  with  the  most  extraordinary  constancy  every 
time  they  dressed  the  sores,  although  suffering  the  most  severe 
pain." 1 

To  this  is  to  be  added  the  profound  admiration,  as  for 
a  consummate  virtue,  which  they  have  for  a  tortured 
warrior  whose  nerves  do  not  flinch  under  his  agonies, 
and  who  raises  cheerily  the  paean  of  his  scornful  tri- 
umph. It  does  not  appear  that  any  one  of  the  Jesuit 
Fathers  who  have  admiringly  related,  in  all  their  horri- 
fying details,  this  more  than  Spartan  firmness  and  defi- 
ance of  the  savages  under  protracted  tortures,  had  sug- 
gested to  himself  the  thought  that  the  terrors  of  hell, 
which  he  regarded  as  the  most  potent  agency  in  the  work 
of  conversion,  might  have  at  least  but  a  qualified  dread 
for  those  who  could  thus  triumph  over  agonies  inflicted 
by  their  fellow-men.  All  unconscious  as  the  savages  were 
that  such  a  doom  awaited  them,  or  that  they  had  done 
anything  to  expose  themselves  to  it,  the  most  sceptical 
and  philosophic  among  them  may  have  resolved  to  meet 
it  if  they  must,  and  to  find  their  comfort  as  some  Chris- 
tian people,  unawed  by  the  terrific  threat,  have  avowed 
that  they  should  do,  in  a  stout  confidence  that  the  doom 
was  unjust. 

1  Mceurs  des  Sauvages,  vol.  ii.  p.  280. 


«    CANNIBALISM   AND   SAVAGERY.  125 

These  barbarous  ingenuities  of  torture  by  the  savages, 
however  relieved  in  endurance  by  the  training  which  had 
fitted  them  to  bear  as  well  as  to  inflict  them,  were  wrapped 
in  intenser  horror  for  all  Christian  eyes  when  the  bodies 
of  the  sufferers,  after  life  had  been  driven  from  its  last 
refuge,  were  embowelled  and  severed  by  the  tormentors, 
and  then  committed  by  the  squaws  to  the  caldrons  for  a 
fiendish  banquet.  We  may  leave  untranslated  the  words 
of  Lafitau  concerning  the  savages  and  a  victim :  "  Ne  lui 
donnent  point  d'autre  sepulture  que  leur  ventre."  1 

That  such  distressing  scenes  should  have  come  under 
the  eyes  of  Europeans  calling  themselves  Christians,  with- 
out engaging  their  sternest  rebuke  and  prohibition,  is  to 
us  hardly  conceivable.  But  what  shall  we  say  about  a 
trained  connivance  with  them  ? 

Baron  La  Hontan,  often  a  dubious  but  sometimes  a  trust- 
worthy authority,  gives  the  following  contemporary  narra- 
tive of  a  scene  at  Quebec,  of  which  it  would  appear  that 
he  was  an  eye-witness.  It  was  an  episode  of  that  war- 
fare, equally  ferocious  on  both  sides,  waged  between  the 
French  and  the  Iroquois.  In  the  beginning  of  the  year 
1692,  Frontenac  had  sent  out  one  hundred  and  fifty  men 
under  Chevalier  Beaucour,  with  fifty  friendly  savages,  who 
in  an  encounter  with  a  party  of  sixty  Iroquois  had  killed 
all  of  them  but  twelve,  who  were  brought  as  prisoners  to 
Quebec :  — 

"  After  they  arrived,  M.  Frontenac  did  very  judiciously  con- 
demn two  of  the  wickedest  of  the  company  to  be  burnt  alive  with 
a  slow  fire.  This  sentence  extremely  terrified  the  governor's  lady 
and  the  Jesuits.  The  lady  used  all  manner  of  supplication  to  pro- 
cure a  moderation  of  the  terrible  sentence ;  but  the  judge  was 
inexorable,  and  the  Jesuits  employed  all  their  eloquence  in  vain 
upon  this  occasion.  The  governor  answered  them,  'That  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  make  some  terrible  examples  of  severity  to 
frighten  the  Iroquois ;  that  since  these  barbarians  burnt  almost  all 
the  French  who  had  the  misfortune  to  fall  into  their  hands,  they 
i  Vol.  ii.  p.  279. 


126  THE  INDIAN. —  HIS  ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  ETC. 

must  be  treated  after  the  same  manner;  because  the  indulgence 
which  had  hitherto  been  shown  them  seemed  to  authorize  them 
to  invade  our  plantations,  and  so  much  the  rather  to  do  it  because 
they  run  no  other  hazard  than  that  of  being  taken  and  well  kept 
at  their  masters'  houses  :  but,  when  they  should  understand  that 
the  French  caused  them  to  be  burnt,  they  would  have  a  care  for 
the  future  how  they  advanced  with  so  much  boldness  to  the  very 
gates  of  our  cities :  and,  in  fine,  that  the  sentence  of  death  being 
past,  these  two  wretches  must  prepare  to  take  a  journey  into  the 
other  world.'  This  obstinacy  appeared  surprising  in  M.  Frontenac, 
who  but  a  little  before  had  favored  the  escape  of  three  or  four  per- 
sons liable  to  the  sentence  of  death,  upon  the  importunate  prayer 
of  madame  the  governess ;  but,  though  she  redoubled  her  earnest 
supplications,  she  could  not  alter  his  firm  resolution  as  to  these  two 
wretches.  The  Jesuits  were  thereupon  sent  to  baptize  them,  and 
oblige  them  to  acknowledge  the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation,  and 
to  represent  to  them  the  joys  of  paradise  and  the  torments  of  hell, 
within  the  space  of  eight  or  ten  hours.  This  was  a  very  bold  way 
of  treating  these  great  mysteries ;  and  to  endeavor  to  make  the 
Iroquois  understand  them  so  quickly  was  to  expose  them  to  their 
laughter.  Whether  they  took  these  truths  for  songs,  I  do  not 
know ;  but  from  the  minute  they  were  acquainted  with  this  fatal 
news  they  sent  back  these  good  fathers  without  ever  hearing  them ; 
and  then  they  began  to  sing  the  song  of  death,  according  to  the 
custom  of  the  savages.  Some  charitable  person  having  thrown  a 
knife  to  them  in  prison,  he  who  had  the  least  courage  of  the  two 
thrust  it  into  his  breast,  and  died  of  the  wound  immediately. 
Some  young  Hurons  of  Lorette,  between  fourteen  and  fifteen  years 
of  age,  came  to  seize  the  other  and  carry  him  away  to  Cape  Dia- 
mond, where  notice  was  given  to  prepare  a  great  pile  of  wood.  He 
ran  to  death  with  a  greater  unconcernedness  than  Socrates  would 
have  done.  During  the  time  of  execution  he  sung  continually, 
'  That  he  was  a  warrior,  brave  and  undaunted ;  that  the  most  cruel 
kind  of  death  could  not  shock  his  courage ;  that  no  torments  could 
extort  from  him  any  cries ;  that  his  companion  was  a  coward  for 
having  killed  himself  through  the  fear  of  torment ;  and,  lastly,  that 
if  he  was  burnt  he  had  this  comfort,  that  he  had  treated  many 
French  and  Hurons  after  the  same  manner.'"1 

1  Voyages  de  La  Hontan,  vol.  i.  p.  233  (ed.  1709). 


INDIAN  MEDICAL  PRACTICE.  127 

La  Hontan  proceeds  to  describe,  in  shocking  details,  the 
torments  inflicted  upon  the  victim,  protracted  through 
three  hours,  with  all  the  ingenuities  of  fiendishness,  through 
roasting  and  maiming,  member  by  member,  without  draw- 
ing forth  a  tear  or  sigh  or  groan,  or  interrupting  his  strain 
of  triumphant  song.  The  Huron  youth  were  the  tor- 
mentors. By  a  hint  or  order  from  Madame  Frontenac,  a 
Huron  gave  the  victim  a  finishing  blow  with  a  club,  while 
La  Hontan  had  already  turned  away  from  a  spectacle 
which,  he  says,  he  had  often  to  witness. 

There  is  full  truth  in  the'  words  of  Lafitau,  that,  "  when 
the  French  and  the  English  have  been  naturalized  among 
the  savages,  they  adopt  readily  all  that  is  bad  in  their 
manners  and  customs  without  taking  the  good,  so  as  to 
become  viler  than  they.  The  savages  know  very  well  how 
to  reproach  us  for  this ;  and  the  charge  is  so  true  that 
we  do  not  know  how  to  answer  them." l 

One  may  easily  account  for  those  barbarous  traits  in  the 
man  of  the  wilderness,  which  we  are  wont  to  refer  to  his 
deprivation  of  all  civilizing  influences,  by  tracing  them  to 
the  savagism  latent  in  humanity,  and  which  is  ever  ready 
to  assert  itself  when  the  restraints  and  helps  of  a  surround- 
ing and  mastering  social  oversight  are  evaded  or  forgotten. 

We  are  familiar  with  a  form  of  quackery  among  us,  as 
adopted  by  resident  or  travelling  practitioners,  who  adver- 
tise themselves  as  Indian  doctors  or  doctresses,  and  who 
profess  to  deal  with  the  roots  and  herbs  of  the  woods. 
That  these  simple  natural  products  furnished  to  our  use 
have  their  specific  virtues,  healthful  and  curative,  common 
science  and  experience  have  fully  proved.  The  essential 
part  of  the  knowledge  and  use  of  these  drugs  of  the  field 
and  of  the  forest  very  soon  becomes  the  common  folk-lore 
of  simple  people,  as  it  did  in  the  families  of  our  first  white 
colonists  all  over  the  country.  And  as  there  are  progress 
and  development  in  all  such  means  and  uses,  and  a  finding 
1  Mceurs,  etc.,  vol.  ii.  p.  290. 


128  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  ETC. 

of  new  virtues  in  everything,  there  may  doubtless  be  re- 
vealed specifics,  panaceas  perhaps,  in  now  neglected  roots 
and  herbs. 

But  the  aim  and  lure  of  quacks  —  white  persons  or  col- 
ored — >  who  announce  a  practice  after  the  manner  and  skill 
of  the  Indians,  are  to  induce  a  belief  in  some  occult  knowl- 
edge or  methods  about  the  treatment  of  disease  by  simples 
acquired  from  the  natives.  Of  course  it  is  well  understood 
that  such  pretensions  are  of  the  very  essence  of  charlatanry, 
and  are  successful  only  with  the  ignorant  and  the  credu- 
lous. But  behind  these  pretences,  and  as  furnishing  what- 
ever ground  there  may  be  for  them,  is  a  very  interesting 
matter  of  inquiry ;  about  which,  however,  it  is  not  easy  to 
reach  a  satisfactory  conclusion,  because  our  authorities  are 
quite  at  variance  in  their  statements  and  opinions.  The 
Indian  doctors,  conjurers,  or  medicine-men  were  called  by 
the  French  jongleurs,  by  the  English  powwows.  Hakluyt 
describes  them  as  "  great  majicians,  great  soothsayers,  call- 
ers of  divils,  priests  who  serve  instead  of  phisitions  and 
chyrurgions."  These  native  practitioners  appear  through 
all  our  Indian  history  and  in  every  tribe,  including  those 
with  which  we  have  most  recently  been  brought  into  inter- 
course, under  the  twofold  character  of  conjuring  priests 
and  dispensers  of  medical  agencies.  Under  either  aspect, 
if  they  did  not  assume,  they  had  ascribed  to  them,  the 
quality  of  a  supernatural  agency.  More  or  less  of  trickery 
and  of  real  sanitary  skill  may  have  manifested  themselves 
in  individuals  according  to  the  make-up  of  each  one's 
own  mental  or  moral  composition,  or  the  intelligence  and 
shrewdness  of  his  constituency  of  patients.  Some  of  these 
patients  in  the  hands  of  real  conjurers  passed  through  a 
herculean  treatment  worse  than  any  known  disease.  In 
the  mean  time  the  jongleur  himself  had  to  submit  to  the 
severest  drafts  upon  his  own  vitality,  —  his  strength  of 
nerve,  his  powers  of  self-contortion,  his  feats  of  skill,  and 
the  strain  upon  his  vocal  organs  in  hideous  yellings.  It 


INDIAN   ROOTS   AND    HERBS.  129 

must  have  often  been  a  wonder  that  either  the  doctor  or 
the  patient  survived. 

There  are  those  whose  testimony  has  gone  to  favor  the 
belief  that  the  Indian  doctors,  as  a  class,  had  really  a 
wonderful  natural  skill  in  the  treatment  of  diseases,  and 
especially  in  surgery ;  that  they  knew  and  made  excellent 
use  of  the  medicinal  properties — emetic,  drastic,  and  pur- 
gative, tonic  and  laxative,  sudatory,  emollient,  antiseptic, 
anaesthetic,  and  antifebrile — of  roots  and  herbs  and  barks, 
and  that  the  course  and  results  of  their  practice  would 
compare  favorably  with  those  of  our  best  scientific  prac- 
titioners. Intelligent  observers  who  have  known  the  na- 
tives well,  and  have  lived  with  them  for  years  in  their 
wild  state,  report  to  us  most  inconsistently  and  diversely 
on  this  subject.  The  weight  of  trustworthy  testimony, 
however,  reduces  any  claim  in  behalf  of  the  natives  for 
medical  skill  to  a  very  slender  substance,  and  the  large 
majority  of  witnesses  pronounce  the  claim  absurd  and 
wholly  unfounded,  while  they  describe  the  processes  and 
material  of  Indian  medical  practice  as  monstrous,  revolt- 
ing, fraudulent,  and  utterly  ineffectual,  when  not  abso- 
lutely mischievous  and  fatal.  In  a  volume  published  in 
1823,  under  the  title  of  "  Manners  and  Customs  of  seve- 
ral Indian  Tribes,"  —  purporting  to  be  written  by  John 
D.  Hunter,  kidnapped  from  white  parents  when  he  was  a 
child,  and  living  among  the  Indians  many  years,  till  he 
was  old  enough  to  make  his  escape,  —  we  have  a  most 
elaborate  Materia  Medica,  giving  us  the  common  and  the 
botanical  names  of  a  great  variety  of  roots  and  herbs, 
as  used  by  the  Indians  for  specifics.  The  tribes  to 
whom  he  ascribes  a  systematic  practice  of  this  sort, — 
which  would  do  credit,  in  the  main,  to  the  profession 
among  us,  —  were  the  Osages  and  the  Kansas.  He  attri- 
butes to  the  Indian  practitioners  great  skill,  and  to  their 
simples  much  virtue.  There  were  two  marked  peculiari- 
ties among  them,  which  would  be  novelties  to  us :  first,. 


130  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

the  practice  was  unpaid,  wholly  gratuitous ;  and,  second, 
the  doctors  tried  to  effect  some  cures  by  taking  the  medi- 
cines themselves  instead  of  giving  them  to  their  patients. 
Unfortunately,  however,  the  good  faith  of  Mr.  Hunter,  as 
an  author,  is  in  doubt  and  question.  His  personal  his- 
tory and  credit  are  clouded,  whatever  be  the  value  of  his 
statements. 

There  are,  however,  authentic  statements  of  real  service 
derived  from  some  simple  medical  appliances  of  the  na- 
tives. When  Cartier,  in  his  second  voyage  up  the  St. 
Lawrence,  in  1535,  wintered  on  the  St.  Charles,  near  Que- 
bec, his  forlorn  company,  buried  in  ice  and  snow,  was 
nearly  reduced  to  extinction  by  the  scurvy  in  its  most 
malignant  form.  Twenty-five  of  the  party  perished,  and 
not  half-a-dozen  were  left  in  health.  In  his  despair 
of  all  succor,  even  from  the  Virgin  and  the  Saints, 
an  Indian  who  had  recovered  from  the  disease  directed 
his  attention  to  an  evergreen,  probably  the  spruce,  a 
strong  decoction  from  which  had  wrought  his  cure,  and 
the  free  use  of  which  restored  the  health  of  the  wretched 
sufferers.  Many  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  in  their  lone- 
ly residence  with  Indian  tribes,  were  withheld  by  scru- 
ples from  seeking  acquaintance  or  familiarity  with  the 
Medicamenta  of  the  Indians.  They  observed  that  the 
Indians  were  jealous  of  any  such  curiosity  on  their 
part,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  they  were  cautious  about 
giving  any  countenance  to  Indian  charms  arid  super- 
stitions. 

Our  authorities  are  equally  discordant  as  to  the  physi- 
cal robustness,  the  general  healthfulness,  and  freedom 
from  many  diseases  which  characterized  the  aborigines. 
The  Jesuit  Fathers,  however,  —  whose  intercourse  with 
the  natives  was  earliest,  most  extended,  most  intimate 
and  constant,  and  who  are  trustworthy  in  such  state- 
ments,—  repeatedly  assert  that  the  Indians  were  wholly 
free  of  many  of  the  most  annoying  and  painful  and  lin- 


THE   INDIAN   IN    HEALTH   AND   DISEASE.  131 

gering  maladies  visited  upon  civilized  men.  As  to  the 
affirmation  frequently  made  by  them,  that  they  never 
saw  a  dwarf,  a  hunchback,  or  otherwise  deformed  or  na- 
tive cripple  among  the  savages,  the  statement  might  be 
parried  by  the  supposition  that  infants  born  under  such 
disadvantages  might  not  be  allowed  to  live.  The  intel- 
ligent and  cautious  Lafitau  is  a  good  authority  within 
the  wide  range  of  his  observation  and  inquiry.  He  tells 
us  that  the  severe  bodily  exercises  of  the  savages,  their 
travels,  and  the  simplicity  of  their  food  exempted  them 
from  many  of  the  maladies  which  attend  an  easy,  indo- 
lent, and  luxurious  life,  with  the  use  of  salt  and  spices 
and  ragouts,  and  all  the  refinements  and  delicacies  that 
minister  to  gluttony,  tickle  the  taste,  impair  the  appe- 
tite, and  undermine  health.  The  savages,  with  light 
nourishment,  hardened  by  their  trampings,  though  tak- 
ing little  care  against  the  rigorous  extremes  of  heat 
and  cold,  are  still  strong  and  robust,  with  a  soft  skin 
and  pure  blood,  "  less  salt  and  more  balsamic  than  ours." 
"  One  does  not  see  among  them  the  deformed  from 
birth ;  they  are  not  subject  to  gout  or  gravel,  to  apo- 
plexy or  sudden  death ;  and  perhaps  they  may  not  have 
knowledge  of  the  small-pox,  the  scurvy,  the  measles,  and 
most  of  the  other  epidemic  diseases,  except  through  in- 
tercourse with  Europeans."  Still,  Lafitau  says  that  they 
are  human  in  their  subjection  to  diseases,  and  have  some 
especial  ones  of  their  own, —  such  as  scrofulous  maladies, 
caused,  he  says,  by  the  crudity  of  the  waters,  and  by 
snow-water.  The  exposure  of  their  chests  makes  them 
liable  to  phthisis,  of  which  the  most  of  them  die.  Many 
of  them  reach  an  extreme  old  age.  "  I  have  seen  at  my 
mission  a  squaw  who  had  before  her  children  of  her  chil- 
dren, down  to  the  fifth  generation."  l 

There  is  abundant  and  according  testimony  that  the  na- 
tives had  great  success  in  the  treatment  of  flesh  wounds, 

1  Mceurs  des  Sauvages,  etc.,  vol.  ii.  p.  360. 


132  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

and  in  some  surgical  operations.  Indeed  many  competent 
witnesses  assure  us  that  their  skill  surpassed  that  of  trained 
practitioners,  and  instances  are  given  of  their  successful 
treatment  of  desperate  cases  among  the  whites,  as  well  as 
among  their  own  people  where  the  European  surgeon  had 
been  baffled.  This  native  skill  was  of  high  service,  as  the 
Indians  suffered,  in  their  mode  of  life,  more  from  wounds, 
bruises,  and  fractures  than  from  internal  maladies.  The 
purity  of  their  blood  and  the  simplicity  of  their  food  favored 
an  easy  recuperation  from  injuries,  and  they  took  great 
pains  to  exclude  the  air  from  festering  flesh. 

The  signal  triumph  of  native  medical  skill  was  in  their 
conceiving  and  availing  themselves  of  that  seemingly  para- 
doxical method  of  alternation  between  the  extremes  of 
heat  and  cold  in  the  treatment  of  a  patient  which  has  been 
adopted  by  civilized  Europeans  and  Americans,  and  credited 
to  the  Turks. 

The  "  suderie,"  the  "sweat-box,"  or  the  "vapor  bath" 
are  the  names  attached  to  a  method  of  treatment  which, 
with  trifling  modifications  and  adaptations  required  by  dif- 
ferent circumstances,  was  the  principal  sanitary  reliance  of 
the  natives  over  this  whole  continent,  with  the  possible  ex- 
ception of  the  Esquimaux.  In  an  emergency,  an  Indian 
who  had  recourse  to  this  method  when  suffering  a  malady 
might  serve  himself  alone.  Many  who  were  prostrated  and 
enfeebled  by  fever  or  cramped  by  rheumatism  have  been 
known  to  do  this,  by  drawing  on  their  own  energies.  It 
was  desirable,  however,  that  a  patient  should  have  one  or 
more  assistants  in  the  treatment.  A  low  hut,  lodge,  or 
cabin  of  bark  or  skins  was  constructed  near  to  the  water 
of  lake  or  river.  It  was  made  very  tight,  with  no  orifice 
or  air-hole  save  that  through  which  the  patient  wholly 
naked  crept  into  it,  and  which  was  then  closed.  Upon 
heaps  of  coal  and  heated  stones  water  was  suddenly  poured, 
rapidly  generating  steam,  which  penetrated  into  every  pore 
of  the  patient,  nearly  exhausting  him  into  liquidation.  In 


DISPOSAL  OF  THE   DEAD.  133 

this  condition  he  would  then  rush  out,  or  be  carried,  to 
plunge  into  an  icy  stream  or  lake,  or  to  roll  in  the  snow. 
The  operation  was  repeated,  if  necessary,  on  one  or  more 
succeeding  days.  It  must  have  been  prevailingly  success- 
ful, or  the  native  philosophy  would  have  discredited  and 
abandoned  it.  It  seems  to  have  been  eminently  adapted 
to  insure  a  decisive  result,  either  in  killing  or  curing.  If 
true  science  can  ratify  its  method,  its  success  or  immunity 
is  accounted  for.  Otherwise  we  must  learn  from  it  an- 
other lesson  as  to  the  capacities  of  endurance  in  the  human 
organism. 

A  revolting  subject,  often  brought  under  discussion  and 
led  on  to  widely  contrasted  decisions  by  historians  and  in- 
quirers, has  kept  under  debate  the  question  whether  that 
foul  scourge,  the  penalty  of  sensual  vice,  now  so  prevalent 
here  among  the  aborigines,  was  indigenous  or  introduced 
by  Europeans.  It  has  borne  the  titles  of  the  French  dis- 
ease, the  Italian  disease,  and  the  Indian  disease.  It  is  un- 
derstood that  our  most  able  archaeological  investigators 
have  effectually  settled  the  question  that  the  disease  had 
its  victims  —  as  is  proved  by  the  condition  of  human  bones 
—  on  this  continent  previous  to  the  voyages  of  Columbus. 
It  is  by  no  means  of  universal  prevalence  among  the  In- 
dian tribes,  for  while  some  few  have  been  reduced  by  it  to 
a  most  distressing  condition,  others  have  had  no  blight 
from  it,  or  but  very  limited  inflictions  from  it. 

The  manner  in  which  the  natives  disposed  of  their  dead, 
with  more  or  less  of  sensitiveness  and  mourning  in  observ- 
ances, and  of  superstition  in  their  beliefs,  and  a  continued 
regard  for  the  resting-places,  would  of  itself  furnish  the 
subject  of  an  extended  essay.  Among  the  various  tribes, 
and  in  some  tribes  at  different  periods,  there  was  much 
range  of  diversity  in  these  matters ;  and  as  in  these  regards 
the  ways  and  feelings,  the  methods  and  observances  of  un- 
civilized men  are  very  like  in  their  variety  and  associations 
to  those  of  civilized  men,  the  subject  is  not  of  a  character 


134  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS  ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  ETC. 

for  particular  dealing  with  it.  Our  common  sympathetic 
references  to  the  natives  of  the  vanished  and  the  vanishing 
tribes,  attribute  to  the  aborigines  a  lingering  and  profound 
attachment  to  the  burial-places  of  their  ancestors.  That 
this  sentiment  has  been  intensely  strong  in  some  of  the 
tribes  is  proved  by  the  fact,  that,  when  either  by  volun- 
tary or  forced  removals  they  leave  their  old  homes  for  new 
ones,  they  have  reverently  gathered  up  the  bones  of  their 
kindred  to  be  taken  with  them.  The  commemorative  rites 
and  festivals  of  some  of  the  tribes  draw  them  to  their 
burial-grounds  for  lament  and  song,  and  to  rehearse  the 
achievements  of  their  departed  braves.  The  most  ancient 
of  these  burial-places  afford  inviting  fields  for  the  explora- 
tions of  the  archaeologists,  though  little  has  been  yielded 
up  by  them  to  increase  or  modify  our  knowledge  or  views 
about  the  Indian  sepulchral  rites  as  ever  having  been  essen- 
tially different  from  what  they  have  been  in  recent  times. 
Burial  in  upright,  or  sitting,  or  recumbent  postures  in  the 
ground,  or  a  disposal  with  coverings  of  skins  on  trees,  scaf- 
folds, or  platforms,  or  in  an  old  canoe,  indicating  a  pur- 
pose of  removal  of  the  bones ;  the  placing  of  weapons,  tro- 
phies, and  articles  of  apparel  or  food  near  the  defunct ;  the 
marking,  protecting,  and  respecting  the  resting-place, —  are 
perpetuated  among  the  aborigines  now  from  pre-historic 
times. 

The  first  impression  which  Europeans  received  from  con- 
tact and  intercourse  with  the  aborigines,  and  which  they 
reported  in  their  earliest  narratives  and  descriptions,  was 
that  they  had  no  religion  whatever,  —  that  their  minds 
were  a  blank  on  all  religious  subjects.  The  French  mon- 
arch came  to  the  conclusion  that  they  had  no  souls.  The 
epithet  "  heathen,"  applied  by  all  Europeans  to  the  Indians, 
was  a  term  which  covered  alike  the  lack  of  any  religion 
and  the  belief  of  any  other  than  a  true  one.  But  extended 
and  familiar  intercourse  soon  proved  to  the  Europeans  that 
the  natives  were  by  no  means  without  what  served  them  for 


RELIGION  OF  THE  INDIANS.  135 

a  religion,  and  what  filled  the  place  and  exercised  the  pro- 
found and  august  power  over  them  which  the  purest  and 
loftiest  form  of  religion  has  and  effects  for  the  most  ad- 
vanced human  being.  Whether  the  sort  of  religion  which 
the  red  men  were  found  to  have  and  to  recognize  were  in 
the  white  man's  view  better  or  worse  than  no  religion,  was 
a  matter  for  difference  of  opinion.  But  the  red  man's  heart 
and  thought  were  by  no  means  empty  or  unengaged  on  the 
spells  and  mysteries,  the  shadows  and  the  revealings,  asso- 
ciated with  religion.  He  who  humbly  and  devoutly  holds 
what  represents  the  very  loftiest,  purest,  and  most  spiritual 
form  of  religion  in  its  tenets,  its  conceptions,  and  believings 
may  be  grateful  if  he  can  intelligently  assure  himself  that 
any  considerable  portion  of  his  creed  or  hope  is  adequate 
to  the  subject  of  it,  —  is  free  from  superstition,  credulity, 
limitation  *  of  view,  imperfection  of  thought.  Of  those 
component  elements  of  religion  which  awe  and  enthrall 
thought,  which  exercise  the  imagination,  which  quicken 
hopes,  which  strike  dread,  and  which  compel  offerings, 
exercises,  and  real  sacrifices,  the  Indian  unmistakably 
showed  that  he  was  the  possessor  and  the  subject.  In 
Eastern  realms  the  monarch  or  chief  was  the  priest  of  his 
tribe  or  people.  It  was  not  so  here.  The  office  of  priest 
—  magician,  sorcerer,  as  the  Europeans  regarded  it  —  was 
here  filled  by  the  doctor,  the  physician  for  bodily  ills.  In 
the  idea  which  underlies  this  combination  of  functions,  we 
certainly  can  find  something  likely  to  win  our  approval. 
The  physician  of  the  body  was  the  minister  of  sacred  rites 
to  the  Indian,  and  the  chief  of  the  tribe  was  both  his  pa- 
tient and  disciple.  Certainly  Christians,  remembering  the 
touch  of  healing  and  the  word  of  power  combined  in  their 
Master,  must  favorably  regard  the  custom  among  our  Indi- 
ans in  uniting  the  functions  of  the  "  powwow,"  or  en- 
chanter, with  those  of  the  medicine-man. 

True,  the  incantations  and  the  professional  ministrations 
of  the  Indian  functionary  may  have  been  barbarous  and 


136  THE   INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,   NUMBERS,   ETC. 

monstrous,  —  of  the  essence  of  quackery,  without  the  con- 
scious intent  of  it ;  they  may  even  have  been  as  our  devout 
fathers  viewed  them,  —  really  diabolical :  but  they  were 
rudely  earnest,  intensely  practical,  and  substantially  sin- 
cere. "  Indian  ceremonies,"  says  Major  Campion,  an  in- 
telligent observer  of  them,  "  are  not  funny,  they  are  not 
ridiculous ;  they  are  wild,  fierce,  and  earnest,  ofttimes 
cruel  and  blood-thirsty.  They  are  semi-religious  rites, — 
not  celebrated  in  a  perfunctory  way,  by  a  salaried  pagan 
priesthood ;  but  are  the  solemn,  earnest  exercises  of  grim, 
determined  savages." 

It  is  hardly  probable  that  any  one  in  converse  with  what 
is  left  of  the  Indian  race  and  tribes  would  now  say  that 
they  were  without  religion,  or  that  such  religion  as  they 
have  was  of  harmful  rather  than  of  good  influence  over 
them.  Their  religion  is  the  product  of  all  the  elements, 
conditions,  and  surroundings  of  their  life.  It  has  its  fierce 
and  hideous,  and  also  its  gentle  and  winning,  influences 
over  them.  We  are  learning  lessons  from  the  contact  and 
comparisons  of  various  religions  and  of  those  who  profess 
them,  in  the  spirit  of  contention  or  harmony,  in  real  or  in 
sham  discipleship ;  and,  of  these  lessons  recently  learned 
by  us,  the  Indian  has  the  benefit  in  tolerance  and  in  char- 
ity. In  the  closest  friendships  and  intimacies  of  social  and 
domestic  life,  under  the  highest  civilization  and  refinement, 
we  are  made  to  realize  that  religion  furnishes  the  material 
for  division,  alienation,  and  obstruction  of  sympathies ; 
simply  because  not  only  its  deepest  processes,  but  also  its 
infinite  richness  of  materials  for  speculation,  preference, 
and  fond  and  clinging  vision  and  trust,  are  strictly  the 
secrets  of  each  individual  breast.  The  lonely  Indian  — 
roaming  the  woods,  occupied  with  his  dreams  and  fancies, 
wondering  over  the  panorama  of  earth  and  heaven,  and 
facing  his  lot  in  life  and  death  —  had  his  "  spiritual  exer- 
cises." He  could  not  impart  them,  neither  could  they 
lightly  be  trifled  with.  We  have  learned  that  the  best 


CHRISTIANITY  AND   HEATHEN   RELIGION.  137 

and  most  effective  part  of  religion  is  not  that  which  is 
characteristic  and  peculiar  to  one,  but  that  which*  is  com- 
mon to  them  all. 

The  severest  trial  to  which  a  religion  can  be  subjected 
is  in  the  effort  to  displace  by  it  and  to  substitute  it  for 
another.  We  shall  have  to  recognize,  further  on,  many 
interesting  facts  bearing  upon  this  point.  The  excellent 
and  accomplished  Lantau  exercised  a  discernment  and  a 
candor  in  forming  and  expressing  his  views  upon  the  re- 
ligious range,  character,  intelligence,  and  susceptibility  of 
the  aborigines,  in  which  he  was  not  followed  by  all  of  his 
brethren.  He  recognized  not  only  the  exceeding  difficulty 
found  in  the  imperfect  vehicle  of  language,  but  the  more 
perplexing  and  embarrassing  obstruction  offered  in  the 
lack  of  mental  furnishing  for  all  the  processes  of  reason- 
ing and  spiritual  conception  in  the  savage.  It  was  almost 
provokingly  characteristic  of  these  really  irresponsive  pu- 
pils, that,  though  they  would  assent  spontaneously  and  as 
if  with  full  appreciation  and  approval  to  some  lesson  or 
assertion  of  their  teacher,  their  minds  were  utterly  desti- 
tute of  any  answering  idea.  They  caught  no  more  of 
meaning  from  it  than  they  would  have  appropriated  from 
a  page  of  the  most  abstruse  mathematical  or  algebraical 
formulas.  When,  in  rare  cases,  they  did  apprehend  a 
gleam  of  some  doctrinal  teaching  or  religious  lesson  from 
the  missionary  which  was  in  direct  antagonism  with  a  be- 
lief or  opinion  of  their  own,  they  could  stand  on  the  defen- 
sive and  decline  what,  though  it  might  be  very  good  for  the 
white  man's  religion,  was  not  suited  for  the  Indian. 

That  was  indeed  an  astounding  and  appalling  announce- 
ment which  the  missionary  made  the  starting-point  of  his 
instruction  to  them,  —  that  in  their  natural  state  they  were 
under  the  doom  of  an  awful  and  unending  subjection  to 
unutterable  woe  after  this  life,  and  that  the  only  relation 
which  the  Great  Spirit  then  sustained  to  them  was  as  wait- 
ing for  their  passing  from  this  troubled  existence  that  he 


138  THE  INDIAN.  —  HIS   ORIGIN,  NUMBERS,  ETC. 

might  visit  upon  them  his  wrath  forever.  The  doctrine,  if 
apprehended  at  all,  was  dulled  in  its  impression  by  the 
amazement  which  paralyzed  their  ability  really  to  grasp  it. 
It  might  have  been  grimly  submitted  to  as  relieved  by  the 
suggestion  —  giving  the  comfort  of  companionship  to  misery 
— that  they  would  share  the  terrible  doom  in  the  fellowship 
of  their  own  race.  And  there  were  many  reasons  and  occa- 
sions which  strongly  disposed  the  red  man  to  long  for  a 
wide  distance  and  a  complete  severance  of  associations  from 
the  white  man,  as  well  for  the  unknown  hereafter  as  here 
on  earth.  If  in  the  vigorous  intellectual  stretch  of  the  rea- 
soning powers  of  some  of  the  more  gifted  of  the  savages  the 
hideous  doctrine  was  really  brought  within  the  grasp  of  the 
understanding,  the  ability  to  ponder  it  would  be  likely  to 
be  accompanied  by  some  keen  speculation  as  to  its  rea- 
sonableness, truthfulness,  and  authority. 

There  were  shrewd  and  ingenious  individuals  among 
those  whom  the  missionaries  sought  to  convert,  as  the  lat- 
ter have  left  on  record,  who  very  naively  took  refuge  from 
this  and  from  other  unattractive  or  perplexing  instruc- 
tions by  insisting  that  all  these  lessons  and  warnings 
might  be  very  true  and  good  as  parts  of  the  white  men's 
religion,  who,  if  they  had  not  a  God  of  their  own,  had 
some  very  peculiar  means  of  knowing  things  kept  secret 
from  the  Indian.  This  ingenious  refuge  in  recognizing 
and  arguing, —  as  among  the  many  fundamental  differences 
between  the  white  men  and  the  red  men,  in  their  knowl- 
edge, privileges,  opportunities,  and  consequent  duties, — 
that  there  might  well  be  a  very  broad  distinction  between 
the  religions  suited  to  their  respective  conditions,  very 
often  presents  itself  in  related  conversations  of  some  of 
the  more  acute  savages  with  the  missionaries.  That  the 
savages  had  a  religion  of  their  own  —  what  we  call  the 
religion  of  Nature  —  would  find  assurance  in  the  single 
fact  of  their  irresponsiveness  and  indocility  under  any 
merely  dogmatical  or  doctrinal  teachings,  apart  from 


THE   INDIAN   AS  A   CONVERT.  139 

such  simple  ritual  and  formal  observance  as  the  Roman 
Catholic  priests  exacted  of  them.  There  were  occasions 
on  which  gifted  and  earnest  individuals  among  the  na- 
tives poured  out  a  strain  of  simple,  kindling  eloquence 
in  expatiating  upon  the  grand  and  exalted  truths  of  their 
own  religion,  of  its  special  adaptation  to  themselves  and 
the  conditions  of  their  own  lives,  the  aspects  of  earth 
and  sky  under  which  they  met  the  experiences  of  exist- 
ence, and  the  kindly  care  of  Providence  for  them  in  sup- 
plying all  their  needs  through  natural  products  and  the 
services  of  their  humble  kindred  among  the  animals. 

Probably  the  fact  held  good  in  its  application  in  de- 
grees to  all  the  native  tribes  under  the  teaching  of  the 
missionaries,  which  is  signally  illustrated  in  the  case  of 
the  Pueblo  Indians  of  New  Mexico ;  namely,  that  while 
yielding  a  seemingly  ready  compliance  with  the  observ- 
ances required  of  them  by  their  priestly  teachers,  they 
retained  in  deeper  impressions  and  with  undiminished  at- 
tachment the  tenets  of  their  ancestral  religion.  They  cer- 
tainly do  in  privacy  or  fellowship  cherish  their  old  rites 
and  festivals  in  connection  with  a  reverence  for  fire,  for 
the  sun,  for  periodical  recognitions  of  the  seasons  in  their 
ancient  calendar,  and  for  commemorating  the  departed 
generations  of  their  race.  Here  nature  and  training,  so 
often  in  strong  antagonism  with  eacli  other,  seem  to  be 
brought  into  harmonious  working  together.  It  is  the  ut- 
most result  which  can  be  looked  for  from  the  most  hope- 
ful teaching  of  religion  to  adult  savage  people.  Should 
not  that  result,  or  even  approximations  to  it,  be  regarded 
as  the  reward  of  wise  zeal  and  effort? 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  INDIAN  IN  HIS  CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  AND  SURROUNDINGS. 

WE  have  abundant  and  trustworthy  means  for  informing 
ourselves  of  the  qualities  of  character,  the  exterior  life,  the 
resources,  employments,  and  practical  capacities  of  the  abo- 
riginal tribes  during  the  whole  period  since  the  first  com- 
ing here  of  Europeans.  The  intercourse  has  always  been 
close  and  continuous  between  the  races ;  and  though  the 
relations  in  which  they  have  stood  to  each  other  have  been 
prevailingly  hostile,  there  have  been  occasional  and  agree- 
able exceptions  to  this  rule.  As  has  already  been  said, 
though  the  Indians  have  a  history  profoundly  interesting, 
especially  in  its  tragic  elements,  they  have  no  historian  of 
their  own  race.  The  few  and  quite  unsatisfactory  speci- 
mens which  we  have  of  their  way  of  telling  their  own 
story  and  fortunes  for  the  record,  are  to  be  gathered  from 
speeches  delivered  by  some  of  their  chiefs,  in  review  of 
their  history,  at  great  councils  with  the  whites;  and  we 
have  to  accept  these  as  they  have  come  through  the  medium 
of  interpreters  more  or  less  intelligent,  honest,  and  qualified 
for  the  office.  Occasionally,  too,  we  have  had  from  whites 
who,  as  captives  in  their  early  youth,  have  lived  long  with 
the  natives  and  been  adopted  by  them,  and  also  from  some 
of  their  own  youths  who  have  been  educated  at  our  schools 
and  colleges,  what  may  serve  as  the  Indian's  own  way  of 
communicating  to  us  the  fortunes  and  experiences  of  his 
race.  For  the  most  part,  however, —  as  in  the  case  of  the 


LIMITATIONS   OP  SAVAGISM.  141 

painter  and  the  lion,  where  the  artist  alone  could  represent 
both  sides  of  the  contest,  —  the  history  of  our  Indian  tribes 
comes  from  the  pen  of  their  conquerors.  For  many  and 
obvious  reasons  we  have  to  regret  what  we  must  regard  as 
a  gap  in  our  literature,  caused  by  the  lack  of  any  native 
contributions  to  it.  As  we  shall  have  to  note  in  later  pages 
of  this  volume,  there  have  been  a  few  master  minds,  both 
in  reasoning  and  oratory,  among  the  Indians.  From  more 
than  one  of  these  we  have  evidence  of  a  capacity  and  acute- 
ness  of  thought  exercised  upon  the  comparative  attractions 
and  advantages  of  a  barbarous  or  a  civilized  life ;  cogent 
arguments  for  the  right  of  Indians  to  follow  their  own  pre- 
ferences and  habits  ;  and  plaintive  laments  over  the  mis- 
eries and  the  woes  inflicted  by  the  white  man  upon  those 
whom  the  Divine  Being  had  set  in  their  own  free  domains, 
with  all  that  could  minister  to  their  need  and  happiness. 
Rousseau  was  but  a  tame  and  artificial  pleader  for  the  im- 
munities and  joys  of  a  state  of  Nature  for  man,  when  com- 
pared with  some  of  these  aboriginal  specimens  of  it. 

Yet  we  need  hardly  feel  that  we  lack  any  information 
which  it  is  desirable  and  interesting  for  us  to  have  con- 
cerning the  habits,  mode  of  life,  resources,  and  experi- 
ences of  our  aboriginal  tribes.  Allowing,  too,  for  the  fact 
already  recognized,  that  our  abounding  literature  on  the 
general  subject  is  composed  of  contributions  from  a  large 
variety  of  writers,  in  capacity  and  in  principles,  who  in 
their  intercourse  with  the  natives,  having  had  widely  differ- 
ent relations  with  them,  and  widely  different  ends  in  view, 
have  seen  and  reported  them  differently,  we  have  all  the 
means  for  a  full  and  fair  representation  of  aboriginal  life. 

A  -state  of  savagery,  however  extensive  the  regions 
covered  by  it,  and  however  diverse  in  local  climatic  in- 
fluences and  productions  parts  of  it  may  be,  will  generally 
reduce  nearly  to  uniformity  the  condition  and  habits  of 
life  of  those  who  share  it.  In  civilized  lands,  countries 
bordering  on  each  other  —  neighboring  counties,  cantons,  or 


142         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

departments  —  will  exhibit  a  wonderful  variety  in  the  fea- 
tures, the  dialects,  the  costumes,  the  domestic  usages  and 
the  employments  of  the  people.  The  range  for  all  such 
diversities  is  restricted  for  the  life  even  of  semi-barbarians. 
There  seems  always  to  have  been,  as  there  is  now,  far  more 
in  common  as  regards  all  the  resources  and  habits  of  life 
among  American  Indians,  certainly  in  the  northern  parts- 
of  the  continent,  than  there  were  of  local  and  circum- 
stantial diversities.  We  can  indeed  discern  among  various 
tribes,  when  compared  with  each  other,  the  effects  upon 
them  of  greater  ease  or  difficulty  in  obtaining  sustenance, 
of  more  or  less  of  providence  in  storing  up  food,  of  degrees 
of  ferocity  in  warfare,  and  evidences  of  skill,  industry, 
and  art  spent  upon  their  weapons  and  utensils.  There 
were  those  who  lived  chiefly  on  maize  and  roots ;  others 
who  gave  no  labor  to  the  cultivation  of  the  soil,  but  sub- 
sisted wholly  by  the  chase;  and  others  still,  on  the  Pacific 
coast,  and  upon  its  vast  rivers,  whose  diet  was  of  the  pro- 
digious supplies  of  fish,  fresh  or  dried.  Of  any  differences 
among  the  savages  arising  from  degrees  of  mental  develop- 
ment we  need  to  make  small  account. 

This  uniformity  in  the  resources,  methods,  and  experi- 
ences of  the  lives  of  the  savages  facilitates  such  a  general 
account  and  description  of  their  occupations,  habits,  and 
condition  as  is  required  for  record  in  our  own  or  in  com- 
ing times.  Not  that  these  annals  are  merely  "short  and 
simple,"  like  those  of  the  poor,  but  that  they  are  uniform, 
repeating  with  slight  variations  similar  narrations  and 
incidents. 

After  all,  the  savage  is  best  known,  understood,  and  de- 
scribed by  his  surroundings.  He  is  the  child  and  companion 
of  Nature,  its  product  and  its  willing  subject.  The  word 
"  savage  "  is  from  the  root  of  the  beautiful  word  silva.  He 
is  a  child  and  denizen  of  the  woods  ;  the  forest,  the  lake- 
shore,  the  river  are  his  nursery,  his  playthings,  his  range 
for  life  and  joy.  When,  even  from  a  long  and  weary  jour- 


THE  SAVAGE  A  CHILD  OF  NATURE.         143 

ney,  he  can  reach  a  sight  of  the  salt  ocean,  the  sight  ex- 
hilarates him,  and  the  odor  of  the  dank  kelp  invigorates 
him.  Aptly  has  it  been  said,  — "  Man  is  one  world,  and 
hath  another  to  attend  him."  There  is  a  sympathy  and  a 
responsive  relation  between  the  senses  and  the  mind  of  a 
wild  man  and  the  aspects  and  aptitudes  of  Nature  around 
him.  As  man  develops  his  own  higher  powers,  Nature 
changes  steadily  in  these  aspects  and  aptitudes  for  him. 
The  savage  conforms  and  adapts  himself  to  Nature.  Never 
does  he  indulge  one  fretting  thought  or  feeling  about  its 
ways,  or  move  a  muscle  or  effort  against  it.  He  lives  in 
tranquil  subjection  to  Nature,  and  dies  as  her  autumn  fruits 
and  leaves  fail  on  her  bosom.  But  every  stage  and  step 
and  process  of  development  for  civilization  puts  man  out 
of  harmony  and  into  antagonism  with  Nature.  He  re- 
sists and  thwarts  and  fights  Nature.  For  his  own  uses  he 
changes  all  natural  features  and  objects.  He  clears  away 
the  forests,  kills  its  beasts,  dams  its  streams,  levels  its 
hills,  raises  its  valleys,  blasts  its  rocks,  tunnels  its  moun- 
tains. The  Indian  hears  of  these  doings  of  the  white  man, 
or  looks  on,  amazed,  for  he  does  none  of  them.  Respect,  or 
fear,  or  satisfaction,  or  indolent  acquiescence,  disposes  him 
to  accord  with  Nature,  or  to  leave  her  as  she  is. 

It  is  admitted  that  only  civilized  and  cultivated  man  ap- 
preciates grand  and  beautiful  objects,  using  his  mind,  soul, 
and  taste  to  engage  with  simple  senses  upon  them.  The 
beauty  and  grandeur  and  glory  of  natural  scenery  —  of  a 
horizon 'notched  by  mountain  tops,  of  floating  clouds  with 
their  varying  shadows,  of  the  gorgeousness  of  the  tinted 
foliage  —  do  not  appeal  t6  a  vacant  mind  or  to  a  rude  sen- 
sibility. But  the  savage  mind  was  not  a  blank  towards 
Nature,  nor  merely  in  a  state  of  listlessness.  As  the  sav- 
age was  in  accord  with  Nature,  he  was  in  perfect  sympathy 
with  it,  and  held  free  intercourse  with  it.  The  energy  and 
activity  of  thought  which  civilized  man  gives  to  brooding 
and  restless  questioning  and  speculation,  went  with  the  In- 


144         THE   INDIAN  IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

dian  to  feed  some  forest  musings,  some  sylvan  imaginings, 
and  to  furnish  him  the  material  of  dreams  and  omens 
which  entered  into  the  traditions  of  his  tribe  and  traced 
or  clouded  its  history.  A  large  part  of  the  life  of  a  sav- 
age was  in  solitariness,  and  except  when  he  knew  himself 
to  be  exposed  to  risks  from  lurking  foes  he  was  never 
lonely,  timid,  or  suspicious.  He  relied  on  his  own  resources 
of  strength,  patience,  and  security.  He  could  find  a  suffi- 
cient couch  on  the  mossy  grass,  on  a  heap  of  green  boughs, 
or  in  a  burrow  under  the  snow.  If  he  did  not  acquire  the 
instinct  of  a  beast  for  scenting  water  at  a  distance,  he  was  a 
skilled  observer  of  all  the  signs  which  would  aid  him  to  find 
it.  The  inclination  of  the  tops  of  the  trees,  showing  the 
direction  of  the  prevailing  winds,  and  the  thickening  of  the 
bark  on  the  north  side  of  them  served  him  for  a  compass 
even  in  the  depths  of  the  forest  and  under  a  clouded  and 
starless  sky.  No  length  of  distance  or  obstacles  in  a  day's 
tramping  oppressed  him  with  a  fatigue  that  did  not  yield  to 
a  night's  repose.  However  dampened  and  soaked  with  pro- 
tracted rains  or  with  wintry  snow  might  be  the  trees  and 
foliage  of  his  route,  he  could  always  gather  some  fungi,  or 
dry  or  decayed  wood,  for  lighting  a  fire.  He  would  mentally 
divide  the  spaces  of  a  journey  of  hundreds  of  miles  into 
equal  parts  without  the  help  of  any  sign-post,  and  would 
reach  his  destination  or  return  to  his  starting-point,  as  he 
had  purposed  to  do,  at  the  rise  or  the  set  of  the  sun.  In  all 
this  he  conformed  arid  adapted  himself  to  the  ways  and  the 
methods  of  Nature.  The  trails  through  the  deep  forest 
were  common  to  him  and  the  beast.  The  deer  and  the 
buffalo  made  his  turnpikes. 

The  Indians  took  for  granted  that  the  earth  on  which 
they  were  born  was  bound  to  afford  them  full  sustenance, 
as  it  did  to  the  animals,  without  any  labor  of  their  own ; 
except  such  effort  as  they  spent,  like  white  men,  in  pas- 
time, hunting  or  fishing.  Every  exertion  that  had  the  look 
of  exacting  toil  was  to  them  unwelcome,  menial,  and  de- 


THE  SAVAGE  CONFORMING  TO  NATURE.        145 

grading ;  they  assigned  all  such  work  to  their  squaws,  who 
were  their  beasts  of  burden,  who  put  together  the  materials 
of  their  lodges,  fetched  wood  and  water,  cooked  the  food, 
carried  their  pappooses  and  household  goods  on  their  shoul- 
ders, and  flayed  the  beasts  of  the  hunt  and  cured  their 
skins.  The  white  man  as  a  warrior  always  had  the  respect 
of  the  savage,  but  drew  only  his  wonder  or  contempt  when 
seen  in  any  industrious  occupation.  Trusting  thus  in  the 
fostering  care  of  Nature,  the  Indians  were  content  with  its 
furnished  resources  or  supplies,  whether  for  a  moment 
these  were  full  or  scant.  They  would  gorge  themselves  to 
repletion,  like  the  beasts,  when  they  had  an  abundance,  and 
would  endure  with  marvellous  fortitude  the  sharp  pangs  of 
hunger  to  the  verge  of  starvation. 

Doubtless  it  is  to  this  earthward  kinship  and  compliance 
with  Nature  in  the  savage  that  we  are  to  ascribe  his  utter 
unconsciousness  of  and  indifference  to  what  we  call  offen- 
sive and  revolting  to  the  senses,  —  foul  odors,  uncleanli- 
ness,  filth,  vermin,  parasites,  etc.  Regarding  himself  as 
akin  to  the  elements,  the  soil,  and  the  creatures  around 
him,  the  savage  did  not  recognize  what  we  call  dirt.  Dirt 
has  been  well  defined  as  valuable  matter  out  of  place. 
But  the  savage  did  not  regard  dirt  as  ever  out  of  place, 
—  whether  on  his  person,  his  apparel,  in  his  foul  lodge,  or 
in  his  scant  utensils  and  his  food.  Consequently  to  him 
there  was  no  such  thing  as  dirt.  He  would  eat  with  gusto 
frogs,  toads,  snakes,  and  decomposing  animal  remains  just 
as  he  took  them  from  the  ground ;  and  his  first  delicious 
repast  from  the  game  which  he  killed  —  large  or  small, 
beast,  fish,  or  fowl  —  was  from  its  raw,  quivering  entrails 
and  its  warm  blood.  The  ordinary  functions  and  processes 
of  his  organism  were  exactly  like  those  which  he  recog- 
nized in  animals :  obedience  to  their  impulses  and  necessi- 
ties was  as  unrestrained  as  was  the  use  of  the  lungs  and 
the  voice  in  breathing  and  speaking.  The  relief  of  nature 
was  as  seemly  a  process  as  was  that  of  satisfying  it :  pri- 

10 


146         THE   INDIAN   IN    HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

vacy  was  not  prompted  in  either  case.  The  crowded  wig- 
wam did  not  admit  of  diffidence,  modesty,  or  concealment 
in  exercising  the  functions  of  nature.  Anything  like  fas- 
tidiousness, delicacy,  or  squeamishness,  was  not  only  for- 
eign to  the  savage,  but  was  utterly  inconceivable  and 
inexplicable  to  him  when  exhibited  by  the  white  man. 
The  Jesuit  Fathers  domiciled  with  the  savages,  with  that 
exquisite  tact  and  self-control  by  which  they  uniformly 
sought  to  conciliate  and  attach  to  them  the  subjects  of  their 
patient  toils,  very  soon  learned  to  conceal  all  their  anti- 
pathies and  qualms  amid  the  untidiness,  the  filth,  and  the 
indecencies  of  an  Indian  wigwam.  Suffocated  with  the  vile 
odors  of  their  surroundings,  the  vapors  of  the  kettle,  and 
the  close-packed  humanity ;  tormented  by  vermin,  their  eyes 
scorched  and  blinded  by  the  smoke,  with  children  and  dogs 
crawling  over  them  by  night, —  these  gentlemen  and  schol- 
ars from  France  adapted  themselves  to  the  situation ;  to 
them  certainly  an  unnatural  one,  though  to  the  natives 
it  presented  no  annoyance,  no  discomfort.  Occasionally, 
for  a  long  fixed  residence  at  a  mission,  the  priest  would 
set  up  a  separate  cabin  for  himself.  But  this  was  rather 
that  he  might  have  a  place  of  retirement  for  study  and 
devotion,  than  to  exhibit  his  distaste  for  the  domestic  life 
of  his  disciples.  For  him  there  was  really  no  escaping 
from  conformity  to  Indian  manners  as  regards  food  and 
its  preparation.  He  was  limited  to  their  larders,  as  he 
carried  with  him  into  the  wilderness  none  of  the  luxuries 
of  civilization  ;  content  only  to  transport  the  materials  and 
symbols  of  tlie  mass,  with  paper  for  his  reports  to  his 
superiors. 

The  first  implements  which  the  savages  were  most  eager 
to  obtain  from  the  whites  were  hatchets  and  metal  ket- 
tles. The  latter  were  at  once  used  as  substitutes  for  .the 
vessels  of  unglazed  pottery,  or  closely  woven  wicker,  or 
hollowed  wooden  receptacles,  which  had  previously  been 
in  use.  Though  much  of  the  food  of  the  natives  was  pre- 


INDIAN  FOOD  AND  COOKERY.  147 

pared  by  being  laid  upon  the  coals  or  roasted  on  a  stake, 
the  larger  part  of  it  required  to  be  stewed  in  heated  water. 
As  their  own  vessels,  though  often  called  caldrons,  would 
not  bear  exposure  to  the  fire  or  a  dry  heat,  an  ingenious 
alternative  was  resorted  to.  The  clay  or  wooden  vessel  was 
filled  with  water,  into  which  were  thrown  stones  brought 
to  a  glowing  heat  in  a  clear  fire  close  at  hand.  The  pro- 
cess was  repeated,  if  necessary,  as  the  stones  were  removed 
and  renewed.  Into  this  water  were  cast  the  materials  of 
a  repast.  They  were  often  most  incongruous  ;  for  the  In- 
dians delighted  in  a  mess,  a  pot-pourri,  though  no  skill 
or  regard  was  spent  upon  selection  or  adaptation  to  the 
palate.  In  a  banquet  prepared  by  savage  allies  of  the  Eng- 
lish after  a  bloody  and  protracted  conflict  with  the  French 
and  their  red  allies,  some  of  the  English  soldiers,  though 
well-nigh  famished,  lost  their  craving  at  the  sight  of  a 
Frenchman's  hand  floating  in  the  stew.  The  conglomera- 
tion of  heterogeneous  articles  of  food  in  the  Indian's  kettle 
was  simply  another  act  of  conformity  with  Nature ;  as  not 
what  they  ate,  but  the  eating  enough  of  anything,  was  their 
chief  object,  and  it  was  the  stomach,  not  the  palate,  which 
they  had  to  satisfy.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  down  to 
quite  recent  years  in  New  England,  in  the  families  of 
husbandmen,  domestic  usage  approximated  to  this  Indian 
habit,  —  vegetables,  pastry,  and  meat  (fresh  or  salt)  being 
cooked  in  one  kettle,  served  on  one  great  platter,  and  dis- 
pensed after  the  same  miscellaneous  fashion.  At  their 
great  feasts,  with  a  profusion  of  viands  which  might  have 
served  the  Indians  for  successive  distinct  courses,  the  same 
medley  method  for  cooking  in  caldrons  all  manner  of  fish, 
flesh,  and  fowls,  dogs,  deer's  meat,  buffalo,  skunks,  raccoons, 
etc.,  with  maize,  and  various  roots,  pumpkins,  squashes, 
beans,  and  peas,  was  the  approved  style  of  festivity,  with 
variations  more  from  necessity  than  of  preference.  Gene- 
rally the  family  had  but  one  meal  in  common  through  the 
day.  But  each  member  of  it  was  at  liberty  to  eat  when 


148         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

and  as  often  and  as  much  as  he  pleased,  if  there  was  any- 
thing left  in  the  larder.  Often  a  hungry  sleeper  would  rise 
at  night  to  satisfy  his  craving.  The  chance  stroller  or 
guest  was  always  made  welcome  to  what  the  lodge  con- 
tained, and  was  first  served.  When  the  ears  of  Indian 
corn  were  in  the  milk  they  afforded  a  rich  repast,  either 
as  eaten  from  the  stalk  or  roasted  before  an  extemporized 
fire. 

As  the  natives  did  not  use  salt,  either  at  their  meals  or 
in  preserving  meats  or  fish,  they  availed  themselves  of  the 
sun's  heat,  the  air,  and  fire,  to  dry  any  surplus  of  such 
food  gathered  when  it  was  abundant  among  them.  Some 
of  the  abounding  salts  of  the  prairies  have  impurities 
which  impair  their  preservative  qualities.  Often,  however, 
as  the  natives  were  generally  improvident,  or,  still  in  con- 
formity with  Nature,  trusted  that  each  day  would  provide 
for  itself  as  to  "  what  they  should  eat,"  they  were  reduced 
to  extreme  need.  They  bore  the  pangs  of  hunger  with 
stiff,  uncomplaining  patience  and  philosophy,  passing  many 
nights  and  days  without  sustenance.  In  their  utmost 
straits  they  would  eat  roots,  bark,  buds,  and  the  skins  of 
their  own  mantles  and  moccasons.  In  the  western  valleys 
Nature  produced  in  luxuriant  abundance  a  large  variety  of 
succulent  and  edible  roots,  and  expanses  of  wild  rice.  As 
a  last  resort,  reliance  might  be  placed  upon  the  somewhat 
stingy  nutrition  found  in  what  is  known  as  tripe  de  roche, 
—  a  sort  of  mossy  mushroom  which  covers  some  of  the 
damp  rocks.  When  this  was  cooked  with  scraps  of  any 
kind  of  meat,  or  marrow  bones,  it  was  quite  satisfying. 
Their  own  dogs,  and  in  times  of  famine  their  ponies,  are 
essential  parts  of  the  banquets  of  the  Indians. 

In  the  matter  of  apparel  the  Indian  put  himself  into 
the  same  harmony  with  the  promptings  of  Nature.  He 
wore  clothing,  not  as  a  covering  or  concealment,  but  for 
convenience,  comfort,  and  necessity  under  the  weather. 
He  felt  most  at  his  ease  when  wholly  free  of  it ;  nor  was 


INDIAN   COSTUME   AND   DWELLING.  149 

it  from  the  want  of  abundant  materials  needing  but  slight 
help  from  hand-labor.  The  hide  of  the  buffalo,  and  the 
skins  of  the  deer,  the  beaver,  and  the  smaller  animals  fur- 
nished him  with  loose  or  with  close-fitting  mantles.  His 
feet  and  legs  needed  protection  while  he  was  tramping  over 
rocks  or  through  the  bushes  with  their  prongs  and  briers. 
Not  till  reaching  years  of  maturity  were  the  children  of 
either  sex  subjected  to  the  incumbrances  of  clothing ;  and 
in  general  the  breech-cloth  for  men  and  a  half-skirt  for 
women  served  for  all  except  state  occasions.  The  more 
elaborate  garments  now  seen  among  the  aborigines  owe 
more  or  less  of  their  skill  and  ornaments  to  materials  ob- 
tained from  the  whites,  such  as  needles,  beads,  cords,  silks, 
and  bits  of  metal,  though  the  Indian  was  by  no  means 
stinted  in  his  own  resources  for  a  gala  day.  His  well- 
dressed  robes,  soft  and  pliable,  cured  and  tanned  with  or 
without  the  fur,  wrought  with  porcupine  quills  and  the 
feathers  of  birds,  and  his  necklaces  of  bears'  claws,  the 
plumage  of  the  eagle,  and  other  devices,  set  him  off  in 
good  forest  guise.  For  extra  adornment,  or  to  add  to  his 
fierceness  in  some  of  his  games,  festivals,  war,  or  scalp 
dances,  he  would  add  to  his  array,  besides  paint,  the  horns 
or  the  skins  of  the  heads  of  some  of  his  relations,  —  the 
bison,  the  bear,  the  deer,  or  the  owl. 

The  aborigines,  whether  sedentary  or  roving,  constructed 
their  abodes  for  single  families  — wigwams,  tepees,  or  lodges 
—  by  natural  rules  and  for  natural  uses.  They  might  have 
learned  their  art  from  the  beaver.  Where  anything  of 
lengthened  or  permanent  habitation  was  looked  for,  more 
of  solidity  and  thoroughness  was  given  to  them.  Barks 
or  skins,  according  to  the  abundance  or  ease  with  which 
they  were  to  be  procured,  served  equally  well  for  the  fabric. 
A  few  poles,  planted  as  stakes  in  the  circumference  of 
a  circle,  brought  together  at  the  top,  with  an  orifice  for 
the  smoke,  a  hole  in  the  centre  for  the  fire,  bunks  raised 
on  bushes  or  skins,  and  a  platform  or  shelf  for  storing  im- 


150         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

plements  or  superfluities,  answered  all  necessities.  Gene- 
rally the  men  gathered  the  materials  while  the  squaws  put 
them  together.  When  these  lodges  were  numerous  they 
were  sometimes  arranged  as  in  lanes,  and  surrounded  with 
palisadoes.  On  removing  from  one  place  to  another,  if  the 
materials  of  the  lodge  were  worth  the  labor,  or  were  not  to 
be  readily  replaced,  the  squaws  bore  the  burden  of  their 
parts.  What  they  could  not  carry  on  their  shoulders  they 
attached  at  the  further  end  of  some  of  the  poles,  confining 
the  other  end  to  their  waists,  while  they  dragged  the  skins 
and  utensils.  Where  the  Indians  now  have  ponies  they  use 
this  style  of  an  extemporized  barrow. 

An  indispensable  article  of  the  outfit  of  every  male  In- 
dian is  what  is  known  by  the  whites  as  the  "  medicine-bag." 
This  cherished  possession  has  an  intimate  connection  with 
the  superstitions  of  the  aborigines,  reference  to  which  will 
soon  be  made.  To  the  eye  of  an  indifferent  observer  this 
"  medicine-bag "  serves  the  use  of  a  pocket  or  a  satchel, 
to  receive  certain  light  articles  of  use  and  convenience  on 
an  emergency.  It  is  much  more  than  that  to  an  Indian. 
The  term  "  medicine,"  as  current  among  the  natives  through 
the  continent,  in  its  equivalents  in  all  their  languages  and 
dialects,  carries  with  it  all  the  associations  which  the  word 
has  for  civilized  people,  and  far  more  mysterious  ones  be- 
side. The  treatment  of  disease  by  the  conjurers,  jongleurs, 
or  "  pow-wows  "  among  the  natives,  as  has  been  before  noted, 
is  believed  to  be  more  or  less  of  a  magical  art.  So,  every 
process  and  means  connected  with  it  is  associated  for  the 
Indian  with  some  quality  of  mystery  and  charm.  "  Medi- 
cine," therefore,  becomes  to  them  a  term  mixed  with  re- 
ligious, superstitious,  and  marvellous  significance.  Every 
object  that  startles  them  by  its  ingenuity,  its  show  of  skill, 
its  wonderful  properties,  —  like  a  burning-glass,  a  watch,  a 
clock,  a  compass,  or  a  bell,  as  well  as  any  drug, —  is  to  them 
"  medicine." 

The  carefully  guarded  and  cherished  receptacle,  always 


THE   MEDICINE-BAG.  151 

jealously  watched  over  by  its  owner,  which  the  whites  and 
the  Indians  now  alike  called  the  "  medicine-bag,"  combines 
all  the  qualities  of  a  Jewish  phylactery,  a  New  Zealander's 
fetich,  and  the  amulet  or  charm  of  a  superstitious  devotee. 
The  "  bag"  is  generally  made  in  the  form  of  a  pouch,  of  the 
skin  of  some  small  animal,  carefully  prepared,  and  its  con- 
tents are  the  secrets  of  its  owner.  Among  these  contents 
may  be  the  usual  miscellaneous  articles  of  a  pocket ;  with 
scraps  of  tobacco,  the  pipe,  and  the  materials  for  kindling 
a  fire.  But  the  sacred  thing  in  the  receptacle  is  some  scrap 
or  relic — it  may  be  a  tooth,  a  bone,  a  claw,  a  stone,  or  some 
rude  device  with  the  totem  or  tribal  designation  of  the 
owner  —  which  is  to  him  as  a  protecting  amulet,  a  medium 
of  prayer  or  worship,  connected  with  his  private  supersti- 
tions or  dreams.  The  Indian  communes  with  this  myste- 
rious symbol  when  alone ;  he  trusts  to  its  protection  on  a 
journey  and  in  emergencies,  and  he  clings  to  it  in  all  the 
frenzies  of  the  battle.  To  lose  this  special  treasure  of  his 
"medicine-bag"  would  cause  to  its  owner  inexpressible  and 
overwhelming  sorrow  and  dismay ;  he  would  apprehend 
all  possible  calamities  as  likely  to  befall  him.  Sometimes 
when  the  whites  have  pried  into  these  secret  bags,  the  con- 
tents have  been  found  hideous  and  disgusting.  To  the 
owner  they  are  his  most  sacred  possession.  Not  more 
fondly  and  devoutly  did  the  Spanish  marauder  cling  to 
his  amulet  of  the  Holy  Virgin,  than  did  the  savage  to  this 
guardian  of  his  spirit. 

The  concentrated  and  sharpened  use  of  a  few  of  the 
mental  faculties  threw  the  whole  force  of  mind  of  an  In- 
dian into  the  directions  most  engaged  in  the  restricted 
exigencies  of  his  condition.  He  had  less  volume  and  less 
range  of  mind  than  a  civilized  man,  but  more  sagacity, 
skill,  and  directness  in  the  use  of  what  he  possessed, —  as  a 
man  deprived  of  one  or  more  of  his  senses  stimulates  those 
left  to  him.  It  was  soon  noticed,  however,  that  the  white 
man,  with  a  larger  active-fund  and  capital  of  brain  than  the 


152         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

savage,  after  a  chance  to  learn  his  ways,  could  far  more 
easily  appropriate  the  keen  and  sagacious  qualities  of  the 
Indian  than  the  Indian  could  avail  himself  of  the  culti- 
vated and  expanded  faculties  and  ingenuities  of  the  pale- 
face. The  European  would  not  at  first  trust  himself  in 
the  woods  without  a  compass.  The  Indian  despised  the 
contemptible  little  index.  But  the  white  man  was  not  long 
in  acquiring  the  Indian's  craft  in  all  forest  weather-signs 
'and  trail-marks.  General  Braddock  allowed  whole  ranks 
and  files  of  orderly  marching  English  soldiers  to  be  picked 
off  one  by  one  by  ambushed  Indians,  skulking  in  the  bushes 
of  a  ravine.  But  the  white  man  soon  learned  how  to  do 
this  bush-fighting  behind  tree  or  stump ;  and  as  the  Indian, 
seeing  the  flash  of  the  rifle,  if  not  struck  by  the  ball,  would 
instantly  rush  upon  his  victim  before  he  could  reload,  the 
white  man  would  have  a  substitute  by  his  side,  or  two 
guns. 

Doubtless  there  has  been  some  exaggeration  in  the  pic- 
turesque and  fanciful  relations  of  the  almost  preternatural 
skill  and  cunning  of  the  Indian,  when  with  all  his  faculties 
alive  and  strained,  in  caution  or  suspicion,  he  exhibits  a 
craft  in  the  woods,  on  the  trail,  or  in  circumventing  his 
enemies,  beyond  anything  of  the  same  kind  which  the  white 
man  can  attain  by  ingenuity  and  practice.  In  the  woods, 
amid  decaying  leaves,  on  the  moss  or  the  grass,  or  on  the 
lichen  of  the  rocks,  the  Indian  will  detect  the  marks  of 
any  feet  that  have  passed  over  it.  He  will  divine  whether 
the  marks  are  recent,  or  the  number  of  days  which  have 
elapsed  since  they  were  pressed,  the  number  of  the  com- 
pany, and  the  direction  and  sometimes  the  object  of  their 
course.  True,  the  same  skill  in  detection  is  offset  by  the 
same  ingenuity  in  concealment  or  deception.  Sometimes 
the  moccasons  or  shoes  of  one  or  more  skulking  persons 
will  be  reversed  on  the  feet  as  if  to  mislead  the  pursuer  in 
his  search.  Sometimes  a  single  person  will  multiply  his 
own  foot-prints,  or  a  portion  of  a  party  will  carry  others  on 


THE  WATER-WAYS   OF  THE   CONTINENT.  153 

their  backs,  or  a  water-course  will  be  forded  at  an  angle  to 
throw  the  pursuer  off  the  track.  The  game  is  a  keen  one 
when  those  on  both  sides  are  well  matched. 

And  how  fitted  for  his  uses  and  his  accordance  and  sym- 
pathy with  Natiire  were  the  surroundings  and  conditions 
of  the  Indian's  life !  This  magnificent  domain  of  earth, 
water,  and  sky  was  his.  Here  was  no  desert;  seldom  a 
spot  inhospitable  to  an  Indian  so  far  as  to  forbid  at  least 
his  passage  through  it.  The  lake-surface  of  our  own 
Northwest,  with  its  border  ings,  is  of  larger  area  than  the 
whole  European  continent.  We  take  in  hand  one  of  the 
latest  maps  of  the  United  States,  that  we  may  trace 
the  course  and  linkings  of  its  railways.  By  sections,  in 
the  brains  of  single  Indians,  and  as  a  whole  among  their 
various  tribes,  there  once  existed,  without  map  or  draft, 
quite  another  but  as  complete  and  accurate  a  delineation  of 
previous  thoroughfares  all  over  this  continent,  in  its  length 
and  breadth,  and  quite  as  well  suited  to  previous  uses  as 
are  our  iron  highways.  The  maps  which  we  have  now, 
covering  our  whole  national  domain,  have  been  provided  at 
Government  expense,  as  the  reachings  out  of  power  and 
enterprise  have  made  necessary.  They  are  the  results  of 
patient  and  laborious  exploration  with  the  help  of  skilled 
engineers.  Take  one  of  those  maps,  leave  all  the  land  sur- 
face in  blank  to  represent  the  original  condition  of  things, 
and  you  will  have  a  reticulated  system  of  threading  nerves, 
fibrous  and  ganglionic,  of  the  lakes  and  water-courses, 
which  seem  to  have  been  disposed  as  streams  and  basins 
respectively  to  renew  and  interchange  their  waters  in  vigo- 
rous and  healthful  circulation.  The  waters  are  generally 
clear  and  pure,  save  as  the  swelling  freshets  of  the  spring 
tear  away  the  rich  mould  of  their  shores  and  tangle  them 
with  huge  uprooted  trees.  One  of  the  main  rivers  gathers 
contributions  it  may  be  from  hundreds  of  different  rills  and 
streams,  just  as,  by  a  reversed  process,  a  branch  of  a  ma- 
jestic tree,  standing  isolated  from  a  forest  which  might 


154 


cramp  it,  sends  its  sap  into  boughs  and  twigs,  and  through 
them  into  each  leaf.  When  the  smooth  downward  flow  of 
one  of  these  streams  was  broken  by  falls  the  Indian  would 
boldly  shoot  them,  unless  the  water  was  shallow  or  the 
rocks  were  too  many  and  rugged. 

The  lakes,  ranging  from  inland  seas  to  ponds,  are  fed  by 
trickling  streams,  rivulets,  and  brooks,  pouring  in  their  con- 
tributions it  may  be  from  three  points  of  the  compass,  and 
they  find  their  outlet  by  rivers  running  to  the  fourth  point. 
The  mouth  of  each  river  leads  it  into  another  larger  stream, 
whose  tributaries  connect  another  series  of  lakes  and  brooks 
and  rivulets.  The  portages,  or  carrying-places  between 
these  water-courses,  may  be  only  a  few  rods  for  land-travel ; 
very  rarely  do  they  stretch  to  a  half  score  of  miles.  The 
sedgy,  reedy  swamps,  the  cascades  and  cataracts  must  also 
be  circumvented  by  portages.  Study  carefully  one  of  those 
skeleton  maps  of  this  vast  continent,  giving  only  these 
expanses  of  water  and  the  broad  and  attenuated  streams, 
as  you  would  a  town  or  State  map  showing  the  highways 
of  the  country:  you  will  marvel  at  the  grandeur,  the 
beauty,  the  ingenuity,  and,  in  these  practical  days  we  must 
add,  the  convenience  of  the  arrangement.  The  white  man 
soon  learned  to  follow  these  water-highways  for  curiosity 
or  traffic ;  but  he  made  first  rude  and  then  improved 
drafts  of  them  on  paper  for  those  who  should  follow  him. 
The  red  men  carried  in  their  heads  and  minds  all  this 
elaborate  reticulation  of  our  continent ;  and  so  they  trav- 
ersed it  by  land  and  water,  when  they  had  occasion  to  do 
so,  for  thousands  of  miles,  with  but  trifling  deflexions  from 
a  straight  course.  Just  as  our  railroads  have  their  junc- 
tions and  their  branches,  so  the  water-highways  of  the  In- 
dian afforded  many  central  stations,  with  a  large  liberty  for 
diverting  the  course.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  of  these 
water-basins  for  extent  of  communication  is  Lake  Winni- 
peg in  the  Northwest,  270  miles  in  length,  and  80  in  its 
broadest  width.  It  is  fed  by  almost  innumerable  streams, 


WATER   HIGHWAYS   OF  THE   CONTINENT.  155 

some  of  them  quite  large,  and  is  the  source  of  as  many 
more  that  flow  from  it.  Its  central  position  on  the  conti- 
nent makes  it,  as  it  were,  a  grand  junction  for  routes  to  the 
Atlantic  and  the  Pacific.  Every  bend  in  a  stream,  every 
widening  or  contracting  of  the  channel,  every  bay  of  a  lake, 
every  swamp,  hillock,  grove,  or  barren  spot,  had  a  name  kept 
in  use  by  successive  voyagers.  When  the  gatherings  of  furs 
or  game,  or  other  spoils  of  the  woods,  exceeded  the  capacity 
of  the  canoe,  the  surplus  would  be  committed  to  a  cache, 
carefully  prepared  in  the  rocks  or  the  earth,  secured  from 
the  beasts,  and  so  skilfully  indicated  in  its  exact  locality  for 
the  eye  of  the  owner  that  he  was  never  at  fault  to  find  it 
on  his  return  way,  or  to  direct  another  to  the  depositary. 
Where  there  was  no  fear  of  an  enemy,  the  voyager  would 
bring  his  canoe  to  land  at  night,  draw  it  upon  beach  or 
shore,  turn  it  over  him  for  a  roof  in  foul  weather,  prepare 
his  evening  meal  generally  from  extemporized  resources, 
and  start  afresh  in  the  early  hours  of  the  morrow.  Though 
for  many  purposes  of  hunting  and  trapping  partnership  was 
desirable,  many  an  Indian  in  his  solitary  way  would  be 
absent  for  months  from  his  lodge  on  his  private  business. 

What  pure  poetry  or  stern  prose,  of  adventure  or  peril 
as  we  may  view  it,  invested  the  life  of  the  Indian  in  his 
converse  with  Nature,  as  he  threaded  these  watercourses, 
—  having  for  his  guiding  compass,  sure  and  unerring  for 
his  way,  his  own  wilderness  instinct!  Whole  stretches 
of  the  native  forest  offered  scarce  any  obstruction  as  he 
threaded  his  course  alone,  —  or  in  companies  marched, 
as  we  say,  in  Indian  file  over  the  crispy  or  velvet  moss. 
But  he  would  have  to  climb  at  times  over  the  prostrate 
giant  trunks,  in  which  he  would  sink  gently  up  to  the 
waist  in  the  red  mould  of  sweet  decay.  Where  storms  and 
tempests  had  swept  over  the  scene,  two  or  three  score  trees 
might  have  fallen  to  each  survivor  that  rose  in  majesty 
over  them.  And  then  what  delicious  ministrations  there 
were  to  a  creature  so  largely  organized  for  simple  sensa- 


156         THE   INDIAN   IN    HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  EfC. 

tions,  in  his  course  by  day  and  his  couch  of  moss  or  hem- 
lock by  night !  The  draught  from  the  cold,  pure  spring ;  the 
juicy  berry,  the  grape  cluster,  the  extemporized  meal  from 
the  game  brought  down  by  his  arrow  or  taken  in  his  snare; 
the  fragrance  of  that  mysterious  earth-smell  in  the  spring- 
time, after  the  scentlessness  of  the  forest  in  winter ;  the 
mingling  of  the  damp  ooze  from  the  decay  of  leaves  and 
mossy  trunks  with  the  sweet  bloom  of  swelling  buds, — 
these  were  the  luxuries  of  the  wilderness. 

The  Indian,  in  the  lack  of  help  from  any  artificial  edu- 
cational processes,  gathered  his  wood-craft  and  his  skill 
from  two  sources.  His  main  reliance  was  ever  on  his 
own  individual  observation,  the  training  of  his  own  senses, 
the  increasing  and  improving  of  his  own  personal  expe- 
rience. Beyond  this  he  was  helped  in  anticipating  such 
acquisitions,  or  in  extending  his  knowledge,,  by  the  free 
communication  from  his  elders  of  facts  and  phenomena 
beyond  his  immediate  ken.  While  hours  of  listless  in- 
dolence, of  sleep,  or  dull  taciturnity  might  pass  among  a 
group,  or  in  the  lodge,  or  the  open  camp,  there  were  fre- 
quent occasions  for  free  and  lively  gossip,  for  relations  of 
experience  and  adventure,  and  for  keeping  alive  tradition- 
ary lore  by  renewed  repetition.  It  was  in  this  way  that 
the  legends  of  the  tribes  were  transmitted ;  and  these 
doubtless  had  for  those  most  interested  in  them  a  signifi- 
cance and  dignity  which  we  try  in  vain  to  find  in  such 
fragmentary  and  trivial  relations  as  have  come  to  us.  The 
natural  and  the  supernatural  made  for  the  Indian  one  con- 
tinuous, blended,  and  homogeneous  aspect  of  things  and 
events.  He  made  no  distinction  between  them  ;  still  less 
did  he  divide  them  by  any  sharp  line.  He  thus  anticipated 
one  of  the  results  readied  by  many  of  speculative  mind  in 
our  own  time,  in  recognizing  the  impossibility  of  parting 
fact  and  phenomena  respectively  between  the  natural  and 
the  supernatural. 

It  was  thus  that  the  Indians  became  such  experts  in  the 


SUMMER   ROVINGS.  157 

ways  and  workings  of  Nature,  which  gave  them  all  their 
tuition  and  training.  They  kept  themselves  close  to  it, 
and  regarded  themselves  as  simply  a  part  of  it.  They 
could  describe  to  a  stranger  merely  by  signs,  without  lan- 
guage, the  face  and  features  of  a  region  ;  its  growths  and 
its  game ;  its  hills  and  valleys ;  its  rivers,  swamps,  lakes, 
and  mountains  ;  its  water-ways  and  its  portages.  Adapting 
themselves  to  the  slow  wits  of  the  white  man,  who  needed 
illustrative  help  for  guidance,  they  would  take  a  piece  of 
bark,  and  with  a  tracing  of  charcoal  or  bears'  grease  they 
would  indicate  his  way  with  more  exactness  than  our 
school-children  get  from  their  maps  and  geographies.  A 
more  or  less  rapid  motion  of  the  fingers  or  feet  would  sig- 
nify easy  or  fast  travel  by  day;  and  the  head  inclined  on 
the  hand,  with  closed  eyes,  would  describe  the  rest  of  the 
night :  thus  denoting  the  number  of  days  for  a  journey. 

The  Indian,  too,  had  variety  in  his  life.  He  anticipated 
many  of  our  people  in  having  two  residences  in  the  course 
of  the  year,  without  paying  taxes  in  either  of  them.  He 
made,  once  a  year  at  least,  a  long  tramp,  for  change  of 
scene  and  food.  If  far  inland,  he  sought  the  border  of  a 
great  lake,  or  climbed  a  mountain.  If  he  could  reach  it, 
he  sought  the  roaring  seashore,  and  had  his  tent  on  the 
beach.  There  is  some  conflict  of  testimony  as  to  whether 
the  abstinence  from  salt  was  universally,  as  we  know  it 
was  largely,  prevalent  among  our  aborigines.  The  Indians 
at  the  West  observed  that  the  deer  in  the  spring  season 
gathered  to  any  salt-licks  that  might  be  near  their  ranges, 
and  seemed  greatly  to  enjoy  the  alterative  waters.  Seeing 
the  white  or  gray  crystals  of  the  condiment  which,  as  the 
result  of  evaporation,  lay  round  the  shores  of  lakes  or 
springs,  they  could  hardly  have  refrained  from  tasting 
them.  They  seem  never  to  have  resorted  to  the  artificial 
processes  of  evaporation.  It  would  appear  from  the  general 
testimony  that  the  Indians  did  not  use  salt  with  their  ordi- 
nary diet,  nor  employ  it  as  a  pickle,  though  when  it  was 


158         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

near  them  they  might  occasionally  have  recourse  to  it  as 
a  medicine.  But  they  did  universally  depend  upon  that 
annual  alternation  of  their  residence  just  referred  to,  which 
for  them  served  as  an  interchange  of  city  and  country ; 
and  this,  too,  independently  of  their  tramps  on  the  war- 
path or  the  hunt.  Those  of  the  tribes  were  most  favored 
who  had  ready  access  to  the  ocean  shores,  especially  to  the 
greater  variety  of  fish  in  the  briny  waters,  and  those  larger 
products  of  the  sea  which  yielded  blubber  and  more  service- 
able bones. 

There  were  many  other  significant  and  ingenious  tokens 
and  devices  by  which  our  native  races  put  themselves  into 
sympathetic  relations  with  Nature  around  them,  and  with 
natural  objects,  —  scenery,  animals,  and  birds,  —  as  if  they 
were  themselves  vital  parts  of  the  same  organism,  its  ele- 
ments and  products.  The  names  which  they  took  for  them- 
selves and  gave  to  their  children  and  to  each  other  illus- 
trate this  statement.  The  names  borne  by  Indians,  though 
so  fantastic  and  not  euphonious  to  us,  are  generally  far 
more  appropriate  and  characteristic  than  those  in  use 
among  civilized  people.  Nature,  its  aspects  and  objects, 
were  drawn  upon  by  the  red  men  for  names  of  groups  and 
individuals,  often  with  admirable  aptness.  These  names  of 
theirs  have  in  many  cases  become  vulgarized  to  us,  as  gro- 
tesque and  disagreeable  ;  for  the  most  part,  however,  they 
are  simply  meaningless,  fragments  of  a  wild  jargon.  Not 
so  with  those  who  bore  them.  The  name  assigned  to  a 
child  was  given  in  view  of  some  trait  or  feature  in  him 
which  suggested  a  natural  scene  or  object,  or  instinctive 
prompting;  or  it  had  reference  to  some  quality  which  it 
was  hoped  he  might  develop,  or  in  which  he  was  to  be 
trained.  We  all  recognize  the  appropriateness  of  the  des- 
ignation, made  familiar  to  us  by  Walter  Scott,  by  which 
a  clan  in  a  peculiarly  foggy  region  of  the  Highlands  were 
known  as  "  Children  of  the  Mist."  So  in  every  feature  of 
a  natural  landscape,  —  mountain,  hill,  meadow,  valley, 


RELATIONSHIP   TO    ANIMALS.  159 

grove,  forest,  swamp,  river,  brook,  torrent,  or  bog,  and  also 
in  every  animal,  bird,  insect,  or  reptile ;  in  the  instru- 
ments of  war  and  of  the  chase ;  in  all  fruits  and  products, 
branches,  twigs,  and  leaves ;  in  rain,  snow,  fog,  lightning, 
and  thunder ;  in  the  sun,  in  the  phases  of  the  moon,  and 
in  the  starry  constellations,  —  the  Indian  found  his  vocabu- 
lary for  names.  This  method  helped  their  memories,  and 
also  served  as  a  sort  of  index  of  characters.  Custom  and 
privilege  always  allowed  to  the  young  Indian  the  right  to 
change  his  name  as  he  grew  to  maturity ;  to  take  the  title 
by  which  he  would  be  known  as  a  brave  from  any  exploit, 
achievement,  or  aim  which  he  could  associate  with  him- 
self. Nothing  in  these  names  indicated  parentage  or  fam- 
ily relationship ;  nor  does  there  appear  to  have  been  any 
rule  of  gender  in  their  use  which  restricted  them  respec- 
tively to  males  or  females.  The  renderings  which  are 
given  of  them  seem  to  have  more  significance  as  inter- 
preted in  the  French  than  in  the  English  language. 

The  observing  and  reflecting  powers  of  the  Indians  were 
trained  to  remarkable  concentration  and  acuteness,  as 
they  were  exercised  upon  natural  objects,  signs,  and  phe- 
nomena. They  were  skilled  in  all  weather  signs ;  so  they 
valued  least  of  all,  among  the  white  man's  trinkets  and 
gewgaws,  the  pocket  compass,  for  they  had  a  better  in 
their  native  sagacity.  They  marked  accurately  the  phases 
of  the  moon,  or  "the  night  sun,"  the  ante  and  post  me- 
ridian of  the  day ;  and  they  gave  to  the  months  names 
from  Nature's  signs  and  aspects,  from  animals,  crops,  and 
fruits,  far  more  expressive  than  our  own. 

A  most  vivid  illustration  of  the  sympathetic  relation 
into  which  an  Indian  put  himself  with  Nature,  was  the 
consequent  relation  into  which  he  put  himself  with  the 
animal  creation.  All  wild  creatures  had  some  tie  of  kin- 
ship to  him.  Beavers  and  bears  especially  were  a  sort  of 
cousins-german.  He  shared  the  terms,  conditions,  and 
means  of  life  with  animals,  being  in  some  things  only 


160         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

their  superior.  The  beaver  worked  much  harder  than  the 
Indian,  for  he  had  to  build  a  dam  as  well  as  a  lodge,  and 
to  gnaw  down  trees,  and  carry  mud  for  mortar ;  and  the 
beaver's  lodge  was  cleanlier  than  the  red  man's,  and  well 
stocked  for  winter's  food.  The  Indian  was  content  to 
live  on  food  similar  to  the  animal's,  and  to  get  it  in  a 
similar  way,  —  by  strength  or  guile.  He  was  content  to 
learn  his  best  practical  wisdom  from  animals,  and  then 
to  outwit  them  from  their  free  teaching  by  exercising  a 
keener  faculty  of  his  own.  His  knowledge  of  their  hab- 
its and  instincts,  gathered  from  patient,  watchful  study 
and  keen  observation,  surpassed  that  which  we  can  get 
from  the  most  accurate  and  interesting  books  on  natural 
history.  And  when  the  Indian  had  made  himself  an 
adept  in  all  the  shifts  and  devices  and  all  the  sly  and 
subtle  artifices  of  animals,  in  self-protection,  or  to  hide 
their  holes  or  to  cover  their  tracks,  he  had  only  to  exer- 
cise a  little  more  cunning  in  his  trick  to  circumvent  them. 
He  was  housed  and  fed  and  clothed  precisely  as  were 
these  animals ;  and,  like  them,  he  was  often  gorged  by 
food  or  pinched  by  starvation. 

And  while  the  Indian  knew  his  own  way  by  forest, 
lake,  and  river,  he  was  careful  to  mark  it,  for  reference 
for  others,  by  naming  every  feature  and  object  of  it.  He 
had  a  name  for  every  region  and  for  each  part  of  it ;  for 
every  rill  and  spring,  every  summit,  swamp,  meadow, 
waterfall,  bay,  and  promontory.  The  most  intelligent  ex- 
plorers among  us  have  often  remarked  upon  the  exquisite 
taste  and  fitness  of  the  names  which  the  Indians  attached 
to  every  spot  and  scene  of  the  country,  —  as  Athabasca, 
"  the  Meeting-place  of  Many  Waters;"  Minnehaha,  "Laugh- 
ing Waters  ; "  Minnesota,  "  Sky-tinted  Water." 

Often  has  the  regret  been  strongly  expressed  over  all 
parts  of  our  country  that  there  has  not  been  more  of  ef- 
fort, pains,  and  consent  to  preserve  more  extensively  the 
aboriginal  names  of  localities,  of  rivers,  lakes,  mountains, 


ABORIGINAL  NAMES   OF  PLACES.  161 

and  cataracts,  of  hill-tops,  glens,  and  valleys,  through  the 
continent.  Wherever  this  has  been  done  it  is  a  matter  of 
gratification  to  the  taste  and  sentiment  of  our  day.  Of 
the  six  New  England  States,  only  two  —  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut  —  bear  their  original  titles.  The  new 
States  and  Territories  of  the  West,  and  some  of  our 
grandest  rivers  and  lakes,  are  favored  in  this  respect. 
Most  fitly  do  some  of  the  scenes  richly  wrought  into 
the  romantic  stories  of  French  missionaries  and  explorers 
—  Marquette,  Allouez,  Hennepin,  La  Salle,  and  others  — 
retain  their  memories.  The  greatest  of  our  cataracts  per- 
petuates, in  the .  roar  of  its  waters,  the  sonorous  melody 
of  its  aboriginal  name.  It  is  to  be  regretted,  however, 
that  as  it  was  on  St.  Anthony's  day  that  Hennepin  dis- 
covered the  western  cascade,  he  should  have  displaced 
for  that  title  the  Indian  name  of  the  "  Falling  Waters  of 
the  Mississippi."  Worse  yet  was  the  rejection  of  the 
beautiful  name  Horicon,1  borne  by  the  fairest  of  our 
lakes,  allowed  to  do  honor  to  an  English  king  (George). 
It  may  be  that,  under  some  aesthetic  enthusiasm  assert- 
ing itself  among  us,  there  may  be  a  general  consent  to 
restore  the  Indian  nomenclature  over  our  country  for  me- 
morial or  penitential  purposes.  Mount  Desert  was  once 
"  Pemetie." 

Another  very  curious  and  interesting  token  of  the  rela- 
tions into  which  the  Indians  put  themselves  with  the  ani- 
mals, as  their  kindred,  if  not  their  Darwinian  progenitors, 
is  found  in  their  choice  of  symbols  from  the  creatures  with 
which  they  were  familiar,  as  the  totems,  or  badge-marks, 
of  their  tribes  and  families.  At  first  sight  these  totem- 

iMr.  Parkman,  in  his  "Jesuits  in  North  America"  (p.  219),  gives  us  an 
interesting  note  on  the  original  name  of  Lake  George,  which,  he  says,  was  not 
Horicon,  — that  word  being  merely  a  misprint  on  an  old  Latin  map  for  "  Hori- 
coni ;"  that  is,  "  Iroconi,"  or  "Iroquois."  The  first  of  Europeans  who  saw 
the  lake  was  Father  Jogues,  in  1646,  who  called  it  "  Lac  St.  Sacrament,"  from 
the  day  in  his  calendar  when  he  beheld  it.  Mr.  Parkman  says  that  Cooper  had 
no  sufficient  historical  foundation  for  the  name  "  Horicon." 

11 


162         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

marks  seem  to  us  simply  an  element  of  rude,  natural  bar- 
barism ;  but  they  mean  more  to  us  the  more  closely  we 
study  them.  And  there  is  another  thing  to  be  said  about 
them ;  for  there  is  an  affinity,  strange  and  unexplained, 
between  these  forest  totem-symbols  and  some  of  the  proud 
escutcheon-bearings  of  monarchs  and  nobles,  states  and 
empires,  in  the  old  civilized  world.  A  simple  prejudice  or 
habit  of  association  of  our  own  makes  us  ridicule  in  the 
savage  what  awes  or  flatters  us  among  white  men.  The 
totems  of  the  Indian  tribes  were  the  bear,  the  beaver,  the 
wolf,  the  tortoise,  the  squirrel,  etc.  The  emblems  were 
generally — not  always,  however — rudely  sketched  and  gro- 
tesque. But  the  design  and  purpose  of  them  were  exactly 
the  same  as  of  similar  devices  in  proud  Christian  nations ; 
for  example,  England's  unicorn  and  lion,  Scotland's  thistle, 
Ireland's  shamrock,  the  fleur-de-lis  and  the  cock  of  the 
Frenchman,  the  bear  of  Russia  and  of  the  canton  Berne, 
the  double-headed  eagle  of  Austria,  etc.  And  if  we  should 
follow  the  comparison  down  through  the  shields,  the  armo- 
rial bearings,  the  escutcheons  and  coats  of  arms  of  nobles 
and  private  families,  with  all  their  absurd  devices  and 
figurings,  —  perhaps  Indian  pride  and  ingenuity  might  find 
more  countenance.  Indeed,  the  roguish  and  waggish  La 
Hontan  —  who  so  scandalized  the  French  Jesuits  by  his 
awful  truth-telling  that  he  has  been  unfairly  depreciated, 
though  doubtless  often  sagacious  and  trustworthy  —  heads 
a  chapter  of  his  racy  volumes  on  French  Canada  with  the  ti- 
tle, "  The  Heraldry,  or  the  Coats  of  Arms,  of  the  Savages." 
This  he  illustrates  with  lively  etchings  of  tribal  symbols, — 
the  beaver,  the  wolf,  the  bear,  etc.,  so  fitting  to  wilderness 
and  forest  men.  The  "  coat  of  arms  "  of  the  kings  of  Mex- 
ico was  an  eagle  griping  in  his  talons  a  jaguar.  It  was  a 
pity  that  they  could  not  have  put  life  into  the  emblem  in 
their  treatment  of  their  Spanish  tormentors. 

In  the  ingenuity  that  has  been  spent  in  tracing  tokens 
of  a  former  relationship  between  the  people  of  the  Old 


THE   INDIAN   IN    PULL   DRESS.  163 

World  and  the  New,  it  is  remarkable  that  so  little  recog- 
nition has  been  made  of  the  affinity  between  totems  and 
coats  of  arms. 

Something  similar  is  to  be  said  about  the  costume,  the 
ceremonial  adornment,  the  got-up  finery  and  ornaments,  of 
the  red  man.  Here  he  exhibits  some  strange  imitations, 
approximations  at  least  to  those  of  the  white  man.  True, 
the  costume  of  the  Indian  was  for  the  most  part  simply 
that  with  which  he  came  into  the  world.  But  here  again 
we  find  an  accord  with  Nature.  The  Indian,  as  already 
noted,  did  not  go  naked  because  he  could  not  procure 
clothing,  but  because  he  preferred  freedom  of  limb  and 
motion.  As  has  been  said,  he  had  but  a  scant  sense  of 
shame,  modesty,  or  decency  :  he  took  himself  as  Nature 
had  made  him.  If  he  wanted  covering  —  as  he  did  and 
had  —  in  the  winter,  he  had  but  to  transfer  the  skins  of  his 
brother  animals  to  his  own  shoulders,  often  naively  apolo- 
gizing to  the  animals  for  doing  so.  At  times  he  would 
smear  his  body  with  clay  or  paint,  to  ward  off  heat,  cold, 
and  insects. 

There  seems  a  long  distance  between  their  forest  garb 
on  state  occasions  and  the  gold,  the  lace,  and  brocades  of 
court  pageantry.  But  let  us  look  a  little  closer  at  the  mat- 
ter, and  compare  aims  and  the  means  for  reaching  them. 
The  Indians  sometimes,  no  doubt,  wished  to  appear  fine 
and  grand,  like  other  people.  They  availed  themselves  of 
such  ornaments  and  trinkets  as  they  could  get.  They  had 
not  our  range  of  commerce  for  stuffs,  shawls,  laces,  ostrich 
feathers,  jewels,  etc. ;  they  had  not  access  to  our  shops 
and  modistes :  but  they  did  the  best  they  could.  The  deer- 
skin, the  leggings,  the  pouch,  were  richly  dressed  and  em- 
broidered with  shells,  fibrous  roots,  and  porcupine  quills ; 
they  mounted  the  feather  and  the  plume,  and  had  for  ear- 
rings and  necklaces  the  bear's  claw  and  the  snake's  rattle. 
But  few  of  them  bored  the  cartilage  of  the  nose  for  a  pen- 
dant. The  young  and  the  old  squaws,  when  coming  into 


164         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

or  gracefully  retiring  from  society,  had  but  a  limited  range 
compared  with  our  ladies  for  the  choice  of  cosmetics ;  but 
they  turned  to  account  such  as  were  within  reach, — bears' 
grease  and  vermilion.  They  were  content  with  the  hair 
that  grew  on  their  own  heads,  and  they  wholly  dispensed 
with  corsets  and  paddings.  Their  parade  in  strange  fea- 
thers and  skins  with  hanging  tails,  their  boring  of  the 
nose  sometimes,  as  well  as  generally  the  ears,  for  rings, 
and  their  magniloquent  titles  and  stately  forms  appear 
grotesque  to  us.  But  how  very  much  in  such  matters 
depends  upon  association  and  use !  Do  not  the  curious 
garb  and  ever-changing  and  sometimes  unattractive  and 
uncomfortable  fashions  and  ornaments  of  women,  in  the 
most  refined  circles  of  life,  furnish  matter  of  fun  and  rail- 
lery —  not  always  in  secret  —  for  the  other  sex  ?  In  this 
country,  in  all  our  public  ceremonials,  inaugurations,  etc., 
we  have  found  it  possible  to  dispense  with  crowns,  sceptres, 
maces,  and  other  insignia,  with  judges'  wigs  and  all  liveries. 
But  foreign  courts  and  shows  and  forms  retain  them  all 
as  essential  or  expedient;  they  go  with  the  griffins  and 
vampires  and  phoenixes  of  the  Old  World  still.  Foreigners 
in  attendance  among  us  on  great  state  occasions,  like  the 
inauguration  of  a  President  of  the  nation,  are  often  dis- 
agreeably impressed  with  the  entire  disuse  of  the  costumes 
and  emblems  familiar  to  them  at  home.  Our  Indians  also 
did  the  best  they  could,  with  their  orders  of  the  collar,  the 
fleece,  and  the  garter.  The  slashed  doublets  of  cavaliers, 
the  hooped  or  trailed  skirt  of  the  lady  and  her  face  patched 
with  court-plaster,  the  ermine  of  the  judge,  the  curled  wig 
of  the  barrister,  the  rod  of  the  tipstaff  and  the  beadle, 
the  sword  of  state  and  the  black  or  white  wand  of  the 
master  of  ceremonies,  the  woolsack  and  seal-wallet  of  the 
chancellor  and  the  staff  of  the  drum-major,  —  all  manifest 
the  richer  and  more  abundant  material  for  farce  and  cere- 
monial of  the  white  man,  not  a  more  elevated  and  ennobled 
nature. 


THE   INDIAN   CANOE.  165 

And  as  for  high-sounding  titles,  where  among  our  abo- 
rigines shall  we  outmatch  those  of  "  August,"  or  "  Most 
Christian  Majesty,"  and  their  "High  Mightinesses"  of  Hol- 
land ?  What  effrontery  would  be  shown  by  a  European 
tradesman  who  should  presume  to  dun  a  Continental  petty 
prince,  whose  title  is  "  His  Most  Serene  Highness  "  !  What 
more  of  significance  is  there  in  the  Emperor  of  China  as- 
suming his  title  from  the  whole  heaven,  than  in  the  Indian 
chieftain's  contenting  himself  with  appropriating  a  half- 
moon  ? 

The  Canoe,  the  Moccason,  the  Snow-Shoe,  and  the  Wig- 
wam,—  these  four  words  suggest  to  us  the  most  charac- 
teristic and  distinctive  objects  identified  with  the  Indian 
and  his  life.  They  mark  the  quality  of  his  inventiveness 
and  the  measure  of  his  skill  in  adapting  himself  to  his  con- 
ditions, and  in  turning  to  use  the  materials  at  his  hand. 
Stress,  too,  is  to  be  laid  on  this  fact,  —  that  these  four  de- 
vices of  the  American  savage  were  original  inventions  of 
his  own,  and  that  he  has  learned  nothing  from  the  white 
man  which  has  helped  him  to  improve  upon  them,  so  per- 
fect are  they  in  themselves.  ^'"" 

What  the  horse  is  to  the  Arab,  the  dog  to  the  Esqui- 
maux, and  the  camel  to  the  traveller  across  the  desert,  the 
canoe  was  and  is  to  the  Indian.  It  was  most  admirably 
adapted  to  the  two  requisite  uses  which  it  must  serve, — 
for  it  was  to  meet  two  exigencies,  and  in  no  other  case  of 
a  vehicle  invented  by  man  have  the  two  conditions  been 
realized.  The  canoe  was  intended  both  for  carrying  its 
owner  and  for  being  carried  by  him.  Incidentally,  also, 
it  served  a  third  use,  affording  a  temporary  roof  or  covert 
from  the  sun  and  storm  by  day  or  night  on  land.  The  In- 
dian ventured  far  out  into  the  open  water  of  our  bays,  as 
he  ventured  in  calm  weather  to  cross  our  sea-like  lakes  in 
this  frail  bark.  But  its  chief  and  constant  and  most  apt 
service  was  for  the  Indian's  transport  with  his  furs  and 
commodities,  as  he  traversed  the  curiously  veined  and  re- 


166         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

ticulated  region  which  has  been  described  as  the  wonder- 
ful feature  of  our  continent.  :  The  proportion  which  the 
water-ways  bore  to  land-travel  for  the  routes  which  the 
Indian  traversed,  was  at  least  nine  parts  out  of  ten.  The 
lake-shore  was  skirted,  the  swamp  was  cunningly  threaded, 
the  river  channel  was  boldly  followed,  the  rapids  were  shot 
and  leaped,  and  the  mazy  stream  of  shallows  and  sand-bars 
was  patiently  traced  in  all  its  sinuosities  by  the  frail  skiff. 
True,  the  Indian  canoe  seemed  to  need  an  Indian  for  its 
most  facile  use  and  its  safest  guidance.  The  best  position 
for  the  occupant  was  to  lie  flat  on  his  back  if  he  trusted  to 
floating,  or  to  rest  still  on  bended  knees  if  he  plied  the 
single  paddle  with  strokes  on  either  side.  All  uneasy,  rest- 
less motions,  all  jerks  and  sidelings  were  at  the  risk  of 
passenger,  canoe,  and  freight.  Count  Frontenac,  when  first 
as  Governor  of  Canada  for  Louis  XIV.  he  began  his  ex- 
perience as  a  voyager  with  the  natives,  expressed  in  strong 
terms  his  disgust  at  the  cramped  and  listless  position  to 
which  he  was  confined  in  the  birch  canoe ;  and  the  Jesuit 
missionaries,  the  most  patient  and  heroic  of  all  Europeans 
as  they  met  every  cross  and  hardship,  were  very  slowly 
wonted  to  it.  They  give  us  many  piteous  narrative  touches 
of  the  constant  risks  and  the  need  of  a  steady  eye  and 
of  a  stiff  uniformity  of  position  in  the  buoyant  but  tick- 
lish vehicle  of  transport.  When  they  had  in  it  their  own 
precious  sacramental  vessels,  they  needed  an  ever  nervous 
watchfulness  against  disaster.  Till  the  passengers  had 
learned  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  exacting  conditions,  their 
timidity  and  anxiety  furnished  a  constant  source  of  ridicule 
and  banter  to  their  native  pilots.  The  merriment  was  loud 
and  unsympathizing  when  the  passenger  tipped  himself  in- 
to the  waters,  still  or  foaming,  unless  at  the  same  time  he 
swamped  the  canoe  with  a  valuable  cargo.  Yet  when  the 
uses  and  the  craft  needed  for  them  were  fully  appreciated 
and  acquired  by  French  voyageurs,  the  canoe  in  their  hands 
became  a  more  favorite  and  facile  thing  than  it  was  to  the 


THE  BIRCHEN   BARK.  167 

Indian.  When  we  read  of  La  Salle  as  contriving  to  trans- 
port an  anvil,  as  well  as  the  essentials  of  a  forge  and  many 
of  the  heavy  'and  bulky  materials  for  building  a  vessel, 
from  Quebec  to  the  mouth  of  the  Illinois  River  in  one  or 
more  canoes,  we  put  a  high  estimate  upon  the  capacity  of 
the  craft,  as  also  of  the  paddlers.  The  shore  of  lake  or 
river  afforded  the  ready  means  in  bark  and  pitch  for  repair- 
ing damages  if  the  canoe  sprang  aleak,  or  was  bruised  or 
perforated  by  a  sharp  rock. 

But  the  lighter  the  bark  was  when  on  its  own  element  it 
carried  its  owner,  the  more  easy  was  its  burden  when  in 
turn  it  had  to  be  borne  on  his  own  back  or  shoulder  over 
a  stretch  of  the  tangled  forest,  or  round  the  rough  rocks 
of  a  cascade,  by  the  portages.  Its  freight  would  be  trans- 
ported on  one  transit,  itself  by  another,  or  by  several  succes- 
sive trampings.  The  canoe  as  a  product  of  wilderness  art 
and  ingenuity  is  to  be  judged  not  only  by  its  own  adapta- 
tions, but  also  by  the  resources  at  hand  for  materials  and 
the  scanty  tools  available  for  its  construction  and  repair. 
Some  curious  conflicts  of  testimony  as  to  the  ventures  and 
discoveries  of  early  navigators  along  our  coasts  and  into 
our  bays  depend  upon  the  accounts  given  us  of  the  style 
and  material  of  the  skiffs  seen  in  use  by  the  natives, — 
whether  they  were  birch  canoes,  or  so-called  "dug-outs." 
The  birchen  boats  were  always  preferred  by  the  Indian 
where  the  trees  furnished  the  bark,  as  most  readily  fash- 
ioned, the  most  light  and  strong,  and  the  most  easily  re- 
paired. The  laminations  of  the  bark,  of  any  size  and  thick- 
ness desired,  were  bended  around  a  simple  frame-work  of 
light  and  stiff  slits  of  any  hard  wood  well  seasoned;  they 
were  firmly  bound  and  held  by  fibrous  roots  and  animal  sin- 
ews, and  made  impervious  to  water  by  a  compound  of  pitch 
and  grease.  A  fracture  or  leak  was,  as  just  stated,  at  once 
repaired  by  pulling  the  canoe  to  the  shore  or  the  beach  and 
drawing  on  the  stores  of  the  woods.  Fitly  does  Longfellow 
give  to  it  life  and  motion  in  his  picturing  lines  :  — 


168         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

"  And  the  forest  life  is  in  it,  — 
All  its  mystery  and  its  magic, 
All  the  tightness  of  the  birch-tree, 
All  the  toughness  of  the  cedar, 
All  the  larch's  supple  sinews. 
And  it  floated  on  the  river 
Like  a  yellow  leaf  in  autumn, 
Like  a  yellow  water-lily." 

It  was  desirable  that  a  canoe  should  be  fashioned  with  as 
large  strips  of  bark  as  possible,  to  reduce  the  number  of 
joints  uniting  them.  These  joints  were  originally  sewed 
with  long  fibres  from  the  roots  of  the  spruce-tree.  One  or 
more  transverse  bars  kept  the  craft  in  shape.  The  bow 
and  stern  turned  sharply  upwards.  It  was  usual  to  lift  the 
canoe  from  the  water  at  night,  and  as  often  as  was  con- 
venient during  stoppages  by  day,  to  give  it  a  chance  to  dry, 
as  the  bark  readily  absorbs  water,  increasing  its  weight. 
For  two  hundred  years  canoes  of  great  carrying  capacity, 
for  many  tons  of  freight  and  many  paddlers  and  passengers, 
have  been  in  use  by  the  employe's  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany, and  are  known  as  Canots  du  Nord.  The  steerage  of 
these  vessels  through  the  rapids  is  a  critical  and  exciting 
work.  The  chief  responsibility  is  with  the  bowsman,  reallv 
the  captain,  who  sharply  gives  his  directions  by  words  and 
gestures  to  the  paddlers  in  the  middle  and  the  steersman  in 
the  stern.  Sometimes  in  smooth  waters,  with  a  moderate 
wind,  a  sail  is  availed  of.  The  management  and  naviga- 
tion, with  a  valuable  load,  require  the  utmost  caution  of 
all  concerned  to  keep  the  balance,  as  the  only  way  to  "  trim 
the  ship." 

Where  the  materials  for  the  birchen  fabric  —  varying 
as  it  would  in  size  for  one  or  for  fifty  human  passen- 
gers and  their  goods  —  were  not  to  be  found,  nor  its 
less  facile  substitutes,  elm  or  oak  bark,  the  Indian  had 
an  alternative  craft.  By  the  help  of  fire  and  his  stone 
axe  he  would  bring  down  a  giant  tree  from  the  for- 
est, and  sever  a  section  of  the  trunk  of  desired  length, 


THE   INDIAN   MOCCASON.  169 

with  regard  to  proportions  of  width  and  depth.  This 
solid  butt  he  would  then  split  with  wedges,  and  by  burn- 
ing and  gouging  would  hollow  it  out,  reducing  the  sides 
and  bottom  to  the  utmost  thinness  consistent  with  buoy- 
ancy and  security.  This  was  the  "  dug-out."  And  this, 
as  well  as  the  birchen  canoe,  admitted  of  gay  ornament 
or  of  frightful  and  hideous  devices,  in  carving  and  paint- 
ing, as  a  vessel  of  war,  according  to  the  taste  and  skill 
of  the  artist.  Nor  were  the  skill  and  cunning  of  the  In- 
dian exhausted  in  these  two  serviceable  styles  of  water- 
craft.  With  a  single  buffalo  or  deer  skin,  or  with  seve- 
ral of  them  stitched  together  and  stretched  over  a  frame 
of  osiers,  he  would  readily  extemporize  a  conveyance 
through  the  waters  for  one  or  many.  As  readily,  too, 
from  the  trunks  or  branches  of  prostrate  trees  would  he 
improvise  a  sea-worthy  raft. 

The  moccason,  also,  in  name  and  device,  was  original 
with  the  North  American  Indian,  and,  without  being 
patented,  holds  the  ground  as  —  for  him,  and,  we  might 
add,  for  many  of  us  —  the  most  fitting,  convenient,  and 
healthful  foot-gear.  The  dressed  or  tanned  hide  of  the 
deer  furnished  its  upper  and  lower  leather ;  a  small  bone 
of  a  fish,  or  one  near  the  ankle-joint  of  the  deer,  pro- 
vided the  needle,  and  the  sinews  the  thread,  for  sewing. 
The  seam  was  behind  the  heel  and  over  the  foot,  instead 
of,  as  in  our  fabrics,  at  the  sole  or  bottom.  The  mocca- 
son was  made  of  one  piece  of  skin.  Unlike  our  heavy 
boots,  it  did  not  impede  the  perspiration  of  the  foot,  and 
it  saved  the  Indian  from  corns  and  bunions.  The  wearer 
was  not  apt  to  take  cold,  as  by  a  leak  in  a  shoe  or  boot. 
It  was  easily  dried,  and  easily  mended.  It  was  equally 
adapted  by  its  smoothness  for  treading  upon  the  tender 
bottom  of  a  canoe,  and,  by  its  pliancy  and  elasticity,  for 
coursing  forest  paths  or  climbing  rocks.  ^ 

In  the  rougher  regions  of  the  Northwest,  and  especially 
for  the  uses  of  the  "  voyagetirs,  the  trappers,  and  the  cour- 


170        THE  INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

eurs  de  Bois"  in  the  service  of  the  various  fur-trading 
companies,  some  more  substantial  fabrics  for  apparel  and 
travel  than  those  of  the  natives  were  necessarily  intro- 
duced. These  combined  materials  and  processes  brought 
from  Europe  with  those  which  were  indigenous,  just  as 
knives  and  firearms  and  metal  vessels,  shared  with  abo- 
riginal implements  an  equal  place.  Warm  under-apparel 
and  capotes  for  covering  head  and  ears,  though  not  in  fa- 
vor with  the  natives,  were  essential  to  the  whites,  till,  as 
was  generally  soon  realized,  the  roughest  of  them  became 
Indians.  The  form  and  style  of  the  moccason  were  re- 
tained, while  it  was  made  so  large  as  to  admit  of  being 
drawn  over  several  pairs  of  stockings, — needful  in  the  ex- 
treme severities  of  the  weather  and  in  deep  snows.  Strings 
of  dogs,  harnessed  singly  or  by  couples,  attached  to  slight- 
built  sledges  and  carioles,  transported  loads  of  goods  into 
the  country  and  took  out  of  it  returns  of  peltry.  These 
dog-trains  required  skilled  drivers,  as  they  were  generally 
fretful  and  rebellious  under  such  forced  service.  A  pas- 
senger rolled  in  furs  might  ride  with  the  load,  but  the 
driver  must  go  behind  or  by  the  side  of  the  train  on  foot, 
and  often  an  assistant  was  required  to  precede  it  to  tram- 
ple down  the  snow.  Never  were  emphatic  words  —  a  jar- 
gon of  French,  which  language  contributed  the  oaths  and 
imprecations  —  more  constantly  in  use  than  by  the  drivers 
of  these  dog-trains. 

The  snow-shoe,  as  the  winter  supplement  to  or  accom- 
paniment of  the  moccason,  enabled  the  Indian  to  go  upon 
the  war-path  or  to  chase  down  the  beleaguered  game  when 
the  earth  was  covered  with  its  fleecy  mantle  piled  in  moun- 
tain drifts.  This  simple  device  exercised  the  wilderness 
skill  of  its  inventor  and  tested  practically  his  apt  intelli- 
gence to  apply  materials,  proportions,  and  disposals  of 
parts  and  measurements,  in  ways  which  science  cannot 
mend.  It  resembled  in  shape  a  miniature  skiff,  two  feet 
or  more  in  length  and  more  than  a  foot  in  breadth,  pointed 


THE  SNOW-SHOE.  171 

at  the  toe,  and  running  back  with  elliptical  sides  to  a 
square  in  the  rear.  The  frame  was  slight  but  strong,  of 
some  well-seasoned  wood,  like  the  handles  of  a  large  bas- 
'  ket.  A  network  of  sinewy  thongs  was  united  with  the 
frame,  for  bearing  on  the  snow  without  heavy  pressure, 
releasing  the  snow  as  the  foot  was  lifted.  It  was  con- 
fined to  the  foot  behind  by  a  cord  tied  over  the  instep, 
so  that  the  heel  could  readily  act  freely  in  rising  and 
resting.  A  small  loop  near  the  point  of  the  shoe  received 
the  toes,  and  retained  the  shoe  on  the  foot.  Of  course 
the  whole  pressure  of  the  weight  of  the  body  came  upon 
the  front  of  the  foot  and  over  the  line  of  junction  of  the 
toes.  The  more  rapidly  the  wearer  walked  or  ran,  the 
easier  was  it  for  him  to  bear  this  light  burden,  and  the 
less  did  he  sink  into  the  drift.  When  the  snow-surface 
was  glazed  by  ice,  the  simple  moccason  was  preferable  as 
a  covering,  and  the  snow-shoes  were  carried  upon  the 
back.  Only  practice  could  give  facility  and  comfort  in 
the  use  of  this  native  invention  for  travel,  without  which 
a  struggling  wanderer  would  often  sink  to  his  neck  at 
every  attempt  to  step  forward.  The  Indian  would  go 
like  a  deer  when  thus  shod.  But  piteous  are  the  entries 
in  the  journals  of  many  white  adventurers  when  in  the 
company  of  savages  on  the  route ;  the  alternative  was  be- 
fore them  either  of  giving  over  in  the  tramp,  or  suffering 
sharply  till  they  had  "caught  the  hang"  of  the  snow- 
shoe.  Chilblains  were  but  the  slightest  part  of  the  inflic- 
tion. The  constant  friction  of  the  tie  over  the  instep  and 
of  the  loop  over  the  toes  galled  the  flesh,  and  the  oozing 
and  freezing  blood  were  sorry  concomitants  for  the  travel- 
ler. Glad  was  he  when  the  stint  appointed  for  the  day's 
journey  was  ended,  and  resting  in  the  camp,  though  roof- 
less and  with  a  cordon  of  snow,  he  could  soothe  and  dress 
his  stinging  extremities.  Yet  even  then  he  had  to  con- 
template a  renewal  of  his  journey  before  the  morrow's 
daylight,  with  the  increase  of  his  sufferings.  The  Indian 


172 '       THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

wasted  no  commiseration  on  such  tyros,  well  knowing 
that  there  was  but  one  way  of  permanent  relief,  and  that 
that  would  come  through  endurance  and  patient  practice. 
Sometimes,  when  there  was  but  a  thin  coating  of  ice  over  » 
the  snow,  which  by  yielding  lacerated  the  flesh  of  travel- 
lers—  man  or  beast — by  edges  sharp  as  glass,  it  was  usual 
to  bind  strips  of  skin  or  fur  round  the  legs  of  the  dogs, 
and  thus  give  them  shoes. 

Little  needs  to  be  added  to  what  has  been  already  said 
about  the  wigwams  or  lodges  of  the  aborigines.  These, 
where  they  were  constructed  for  anything  like  permanency 
of  habitation,  might  be  made  comfortable,  bating  only  the 
annoyances  of  smoke,  vermin,  and  untidiness,  —  which, 
however,  to  the  Indian  were  hardly  an  abatement  of  com- 
fort. When  a  war-party  or  the  necessity  of  hunting  for 
daily  supplies  did  not  call  the  master  of  the  lodge  away, 
but  left  him  an  interval  of  domestic  leisure,  he  divided  his 
time  between  eating,  sleeping,  and  working  upon  his  simple 
tackle  and  implements.  Where  there  was  a  group  of  such 
lodges  in  a  village,  the  men  would  have  their  coteries  by 
themselves ;  while  the  squaws,  when  not  engaged  upon  the 
family  food  or  apparel,  would  find  a  congenial  resource  in 
gossip.  The  practice  of  polygamy,  though  universally  al- 
lowable, seems  to  have  been  indulged  in  only  in  the  small 
minority  of  households.  There  was  nothing  to  prevent  a 
man  from  having  as  many  wives  as  he  had  means  to  pur- 
chase from  their  parents,  and  was  able  to  maintain.  The 
usual  risks  incidental  to  married  life,  especially  where 
there  were  duplicated  or  multiplied  demands  upon  the  care 
and  attention  of  a  husband,  were  of  course  in  some  in- 
stances realized.  But  all  testimony  accords  in  assuring  us 
that  there  was  no  more,  if  not  really  less,  of  discord  in  an 
Indian  lodge,  even  with  this  provocative  occasion  for  it, 
than  in  the  homes  of  all  the  degrees  of  civilized  people. 

Doubtless  there  were  seasons,  especially  in  the  northern 
regions  of  the  country,  when  in  the  grip  of  a  lengthened 


HIS   WINTER   EXPERIENCES.  173 

winter  —  buried  in  mountain  heaps  of  snow,  whirled  by  the 
wild  blasts,  and  scant  or  wholly  destitute  even  of  the  least 
nutritive  food  —  life  in  the  wigwam  for  a  solitary  person  or 
a  family  combined  all  the  miseries  of  a  dismal  and  dreary 
existence.  The  Indian's  self-mastery  and  philosophy  bore 
him  through  these  dark  extremes  of  his  experience.  The 
bear  was  hibernating ;  the  deer  had  sought  the  thickest 
woods  ;  the  beaver's  lodge  was  fast  bound  in  ice ;  and  even 
the  fish  in  the  streams  were  not  longer  to  be  reached  by 
the  gleam  of  torches  or  tempted  by  an  air-hole  through  the 
thick  covering  of  hard  and  soft  snow.  There  was  not  a 
bird  in  the  air.  The  weary  season  wore  away  :  and  when 
the  spring  came  —  as  it  does  in  those  northern  realms  — 
with  a  rushing  cheer  and  vigor,  the  spell  was  broken  ;  for 
Nature  provided  bountifully  for  her  children  when  she  was 
released  from  her  own  bondage. 

The  prevailing  view  and  representation  of  the  habits  of 
the  aborigines  is  that  they  were  wasteful  and  improvident 
as  to  provision  for  their  own  most  common  needs  of  sus- 
tenance ;  and  that  in  consequence  there  was  a  period  in 
every  year,  in  the  extremities  of  winter,  when  they  were 
hopelessly  annoyed  by  the  pangs  of  hunger,  —  often  to  the 
extremities  of  starvation.  And  this  was  said  to  be  the 
case,  not  from  the  absolute  conditions  and  necessities  and 
exigencies  of  their  way  of  life,  but  from  sheer  indolence, 
recklessness,  and  an  utter  incompetency  in  forethought 
and  prudence.  There  may  be  a  general  accordance  with 
fact  and  observation  in  this  view,  but  it  needs  qualifica- 
tion ;  very  large  and  very  significant  exceptions  are  found 
to  it  in  many  cases.  Of  course  the  Indian's  habits  as  to 
thrift  and  providence  in  providing  for  his  needs  put  him 
most  strongly  in  contrast  with  those  of  the  first  white 
settlers  on  his  lands.  The  wise  and  laborious  Northern 
colonists,  in  foresight  of  a  stern  winter,  built  their  log- 
cabins  strong  and  tight,  with  chimneys  to  carry  off  the 
smoke.  They  provided  cellars  banked  against  the  pene- 


174 

trating  frost,  where  they  stored  their  vegetables  and  kept 
their  tubs  of  salted  meat.  They  raised  their  wood-piles 
nigh  at  hand,  and  very  soon  had  shelters  for  domestic 
cattle, — goats,  cows,  pigs,  —  and  for  poultry.  The  Indian 
had  resources  within  his  reach  which  he  only  in  small 
part  improved.  He  had  no  salt  for  pickling,  and  could 
only  smoke  and  dry  his  surplus  meat  or  fish.  His  native 
vegetables  were  peas,  beans,  melons,  squashes,  pumpkins, 
gourds,  maize  ;  the  forest  yielded  in  abundance  juicy  ber- 
ries, some  succulent  roots  and  grasses  and  grapes,  as  well 
as  game;  and  the  ocean  shore,  lakes,  and  rivers  gave  up 
their  finny  spoils.  White  men  on  the  frontiers  have  con- 
trived to  live,  and  after  a  fashion  luxuriously,  on  these 
resources.  The  Indian,  also,  had  his  feasts  upon  them, 
but  not  wholly  to  the  exclusion  of  fasts.  Gathering  details 
from  a  wide  and  varied  list  of  early  authorities  about  their 
way  of  life  and  habits  in  these  respects,  we  can  make 
rather  a  favorable  show  for  them.  It  seems  evident  that 
white  men  learned  from  the  Indian  the  process  of  making 
sugar  from  the  sap  of  the  maple-tree,  and  also  the  medi- 
cinal virtues  of  several  roots  and  herbs.  The  natives,  as 
before  stated,  unquestionably  anticipated  their  white  vis- 
itors in  their  sudatory  treatment  of  the  sick,  after  the 
fashion  of  our  modern  Turkish  baths ;  though  Lafitau  finds 
the  process  and  contrivance  in  the  old  classic  world,  as  he 
traces  so  many  parallels  there  with  things  supposed  to  be 
peculiar  to  our  aborigines.  They  buried  heaps  of  their  ripe 
maize,  or  Indian  corn,  in  pits,  or  packed  it  high  on  scaffold- 
ings, and  a  skilful  squaw  could  make  a  variety  of  dishes 
from  this  substantial  grain.  In  fact,  it  would  appear  that 
the  early  European  colonists,  in  all  their  widely  separated 
harboring  places  on  the  whole  stretch  of  our  sea-coast, 
were  indebted  to  the  surplus  maize  which  the  Indians  had 
in  store,  to  save  them,  on  one  or  another  exigency,  from 
starvation. 

When  Jacques  Cartier  first  ascended  the  St.  Lawrence, 


HIS   LARGE   CORNFIELDS.  175 

in  1534,  he  says  the  Indians  gave  him  great  quantities  of 
good  food  and  palatable  bread.  The  next  year  when  he 
was  taken  by  them  to  their  village,  Hochelaga,  now  the 
site  of  Montreal,  he  describes  far-stretching  fields  covered 
with  ripening  maize,  —  probably  one  of  the  last  crops  of 
tfnt  soon  aiter  vrar-havocked  region. 

The  early  Jesuit  missionaries  all  write  of  well-culti- 
vated fields  cared  for  by  the  natives  ;  who  pursued  the 
same  course  as  our  frontiersmen  have  followed  ever  since, 
—  girdling  and  then  burning  the  trees,  leaving  the  stumps 
to  decay,  grubbing  up  bushes,  and  then  planting.  Sagard, 
a  Recollet  missionary  in  1625,  gives  a  very  particular 
account  of  the  Hurons  as  dividing  their  lands  into  lots 
which  were  well  cultivated. 

The  first  act  of  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  in  the  extreme 
needs  of  their  first  winter  here  was  a  trespass  upon  the 
contents  of  a  pit  of  corn  buried  by  the  Indians,  though 
they  afterwards  made  payment  for  what  they  appropriated. 
The  friendly  natives  taught  the  Plymouth  people  how  "  to 
set  corn," — that  is,  to  plant  the  kernels  of  maize,  which 
was  a  strange  grain  to  them.  The  beautiful  streams,  the 
Town  Brook  and  the  Jones  River,  poured  in  in  the  spring- 
time, in  season  for  planting,  immense  shoals  of  alewives. 
One  or  two  of  these  fish  were  put  with  the  kernels  into 
each  drill,  and  served  for  an  enriching  manure.  A  brook 
running  in  from  the  Mystic,  near  the  classic  grounds  of 
Harvard  College,  still  bears  the  name  of  Alewife  Brook. 
The  first  white  settlers  found  the  natives  drawing  from  it  a 
fertilizer  for  a  wide  extent  of  their  planting  grounds.  The 
Pilgrims  very  often  sent  their  shallops  to  the  coast  of  Maine 
to  buy  corn  of  the  Indians.  When  the  first  settlers  of  Con- 
necticut were  once  in  dread  of  famine,  they  sent  up  the 
river  from  Hartford  and  Windsor  to  Pocumtock,  now  Deer- 
field,  and  the  river  Indians  brought  down  to  them  fifty 
canoe-loads  of  corn.  In  Governor  Endicott's  raid  on  the 
natives  in  Block  Island,  mention  is  made  of  two  hundred 


176        THE  INDIAN  IN  HIS  CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

acres  of  "  stately  fields  of  corn "  which  were  destroyed  by 
the  whites.  In  the  frequent  and  destructive  onsets  made 
by  the  French,  with  Huron  allies,  against  the  Iroquois  or 
New  York  Indians  and  their  beautiful  fields,  marvellously 
large  garners  of  corn  were  burned,  in  fruitless  attempts  to 
starve  the  natives,  who  had  supplies  for  two  years  in  store. 
The  party  under  General  Sullivan,  in  his  Indian  expedition 
in  1779,  saw  with  surprise  the  evidences  of  thrift  among 
the  Iroquois,  and  noted  not  only  vast  quantities  of  maize 
and  vegetables,  but  old  apple-orchards,  the  stock  of  which 
must  have  been  obtained  from  the  French  or  Dutch.  In  the 
campaigns  of  Generals  Harmer  and  St.  Clair  beyond  the 
Ohio,  after  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  war,  we  read  of 
the  destruction  of  vast  fields  of  corn  in  the  river  bottoms, 
belonging  to  the  Miamis. 

The  early  French  missionaries  describe  the  more  thrifty 
of  the  natives  with  whom  they  first  became  acquainted, — 
the  Abenakis,  around  the  Penobscot  and  in  northern  New 
Hampshire,  —  as  industrious  and  prosperous.  They  had 
fixed  palisaded  villages  and  substantial  bark-cabins.  Their 
ornaments  were  rings,  necklaces,  bracelets,  and  belts  skil- 
fully wrought  with  shells  and  stones.  They  had  fertile  and 
well-tilled  fields  of  maize  and  other  vegetables,  planted  in 
June  and  harvested  in  August.  Further  west  the  wild  game 
was  in  abundance,  different  kinds  of  it  alternating  in  differ- 
ent seasons.  Enormous  flocks  of  fowl  made  their  spring 
and  autumn  migrations,  offering  a  rich  variety.  It  would 
appear,  that,  according  as  the  natural  crops  or  products  of 
various  parts  of  the  country  admitted  of  preservation  by 
any  artificial  process  within  the  skill  of  the  Indian,  they 
were  stored  for  use.  The  maize  was  the  most  substantial 
and  the  easiest  for  culture  and  preservation,  through  heat 
and  cold.  A  quart  of  the  kernels  roasted  and  pounded,  to 
be  as  needed  mixed  in  water,  with  or  without  being  boiled, 
committed  by  the  Indian  to  his  pouch,  would  serve  him  for 
a  long  journey.  It  was  usual  for  the  squaws  to  dry  large 


HIS  ECONOMY.  177 

quantities  of  summer  berries,  and  to  renew  the  juices  in 
them  by  mixing  them  in  cooking  with  flesh  food. 

So  far  from  agreeing  with  the  general  judgment  about 
the  wastefulness  and  improvidence  of  the  Indians,  there 
are  intelligent  persons  who  have  lived  among  them,  observ- 
ant of  their  ways,  who  have  given  strong  statements  of 
quite  other  qualities  of  theirs,  especially  in  some  of  the 
Western  tribes.  Indeed,  their  economy  and  thrift  have  in 
some  matters  been  set  in  censorious  contrast  with  the  reck- 
lessness of  the  whites.  For  example,  in  some  recent  years 
there  is  evidence  that  at  least  a  million  buffaloes  on  the 
Western  plains  have  annually  been  slaughtered  by  whites 
and  Indians  in  the  way  of  trade,  merely  for  their  hides  and 
tongues,  —  the  carcasses  being  wantonly  left  to  poison  the 
air  for  many  miles,  and  to  fatten  wolves  and  coyotes.  Be- 
fore this  greed  of  traffic  came  in,  the  economical  natives 
made  a  good  use  of  every  part  of  a  single  buffalo,  killing 
only  such  as  they  could  thus  improve.  The  flesh,  either 
fresh  or  dried,  was  for  food.  The  skins  were  dressed  with 
all  of  the  white  man's  skill,  though  by  different  processes, 
as  were  those  of  other  animals,  either  to  remove  or  to  pre- 
serve the  hair.  They  were  well  oiled  and  dried  and  made 
pliant.  These  skins  were  variously  employed  for  blankets, 
lodge-covers,  and  beds,  for  temporary  boats,  for  saddles, 
lassos,  and  thongs.  The  horns  were  wrought  into  ladles 
and  spoons  ;  the  brains  furnished  a  material  which  had  a 
virtue  in  the  process  of  tanning  ;  the  bones  were  converted 
into  saddle-trees,  war-clubs,  and  scrapers  ;  the  marrow  into 
choice  fat ;  the  sinews  into  bow-strings  and  thread ;  the 
feet  and  hoofs  into  glue  ;  the  hair  was  twisted  for  ropes 
and  halters.  So  that  the  Indians  left  nothing  of  the  car- 
cass— as  do  the  whites — to  feed  the  ravenous  and  unprofit- 
able packs  of  prowlers.  Nor  did  the  Indians  generally  kill 
the  buffalo  at  a  season  when  his  flesh  was  not  in  keeping 
for  food,  or  his  hide  for  dressing. 

There  were  also  preferred  delicacies  of  the  wilderness, 

12 


178         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

well  known  to  and  highly  appreciated  by  the  Indian. 
Among  these  were  the  buffalo's  tongue  and  hump,  the 
elk's  nose,  the  beaver's  tail,  and  the  bear's  paws.  Of  the 
cookery  of  the  squaws  it  may  not  be  well  to  give  any 
more  particulars  than  those  on  a  previous  page.  Doubt- 
less it  was  and  is  unappetizing,  repulsive,  revolting  often, 
especially  when  the  process  was  watched  and  the  mate- 
rials in  the  kettle  were  known.  But  wilderness  food 
and  wilderness  appetites  went  together;  and  the  kitchen, 
even  a  French  one,  is  not  for  the  eye  a  good  provocative 
for  the  dining-table. 

Readers  who  are  versed  in  the  voluminous  and  highly 
interesting  literature  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  the 
narratives  of  the  Arctic  and  Northwest  voyagers  and  ex- 
plorers, the  adventures  of  fur-traders,  trappers,  etc.,  know 
well  how  an  article  called  "  pemmican "  appears  in 
them  all  as  a  commodity  for  subsistence  and  traffic.  This 
highly  nutritive,  compact,  and  every  way  most  convenient 
and  serviceable  kind  of  food,  for  preservation  and  trans- 
portation, might  rightfully  be  patented  by  the  Western 
and  the  Northern  Indians.  It  was  invented  by  them,  and 
by  them  it  is  most  skilfully  and  scientifically  prepared. 
The  flesh  of  the  buffalo,  the  deer,  the  bear,  or  the  elk  is 
shredded  off  by  the  squaws,  dried  in  the  sun  to  retain  its 
juices  (two  days  of  favorable  weather  are  sufficient), 
pounded  fine,  and  then  packed  in  sacks  made  of  the  skins 
of  the  legs  of  the  animals,  stripped  off  without  being  cut 
lengthwise.  The  lean  meat,  without  salt,  is  then  covered 
from  the  air  by  pouring  the  fat  upon  it.  The  propor- 
tions are  forty  pounds  of  fat  to  fifty  of  lean ;  and  some- 
times, when  the  articles  are  at  hand,  there  will  be  mixed 
in  the  compound  five  pounds  of  berries  and  five  of  maple 
sugar.  This  may  not  make  the  most  palatable  of  viands, 
but  it  is  admirably  adapted  for  the  uses  which  enormous 
quantities  of  it  have  served  alike  for  men  and  their  sledge- 
dogs. 


INTERCOMMUNICATION   BY  LANGUAGE.  179 

The  diversity  of  languages  among  our  aborigines, 
already  referred  to,  and  the  relations  between  the  roots  of 
their  words,  their  vocabularies,  and  grammatical  construc- 
tions have  been  the  subjects  of  a  vast  amount  of  inquiry 
and  discussion.  The  least  learned  and  the  most  learned 
have  contributed  about  equally  to  such  information  as 
we  have  on  these  subjects.  Illiterate  white  men  resid- 
ing with  the  Indians  as  traders  or  agents,  or  sharing 
with  them  the  camp,  the  hunt,  or  the  war-path,  have 
been  forced  to  become  linguists ;  and  in  some  cases  they 
have  quickened  their  intelligence  and  sharpened  their 
faculties  to  learn  what  they  might  about  languages  or 
dialects  which,  in  their  inflections  and  constructions,  dif- 
fer radically  from  all  those  in  use  among  civilized  men. 
With  the  single  exception  of  that  of  an  .ingenious 
scholar  among  the  Cherokees,  no  attempt,  so  far  as  we 
know,  has  ever  been  made  by  the  natives  on  the  whole 
stretch  of  this  continent,  from  north  to  south,  to  con- 
struct a  written  language,  —  not  even  in  the  simplest 
phonetic  characters.  All  has  been  left  to  sound  and  in- 
tonation. The  tablets  and  scrolls  inscribed  or  painted 
with  symbols  and  hieroglyphics  by  the  Aztecs  to  pre- 
serve the  chronicles  of  the  people,  as  described  to  us 
by  the  Spanish  invaders,  and  as  appears  from  the  speci- 
mens of  them  still  extant,  were  in  no  sense  linguistic 
or  phonetic  transcripts  or  representations.  The  prepon- 
derance of  evidence  seems  to  favor  the  inference  that 
ages  ago  more  or  less  of  intercourse  was  maintained  be- 
tween the  aborigines,  all  the  way  through  the  continent 
from  the  Missouri  to  Mexico  and  Peru.  This,  however, 
seems  to  have  ceased  before  the  time  of  European  discov- 
eries. Certain  it  is  —  whether  from  devastating  inter- 
nal wars,  from  the  difficulties  of  extended  intercourse, 
from  natural  barriers,  or  the  interposition  of  large  spaces 
of  vacant  wilderness  —  there  was  then  almost  a  total 
lack  of  intercommunication  between  widely  separated 


180         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

tribes.  The  variety  of  languages  and  dialects  was  so 
great,  that,  in  the  lack  of  a  common  tongue,  the  Indians 
could  hold  but  little  communication  by  speech.  Cer- 
tainly the  original  tribes  have  been  more  mixed  and  con- 
fused together  since  they  have  been  scattered,  reduced, 
and  driven  from  their  original  homes  by  the  whites. 
But  this  fact  does  not  appear  to  have  availed  towards 
aiding  them  to  understand  each  other's  speech.  The 
penalty  visited  upon  our  whole  race,  in  the  confusion  of 
tongues  at  Babel,  has  inflicted  its  full  share  on  our 
Indians. 

General  Custer,  rehearsing  his  experience  among  South- 
ern and  Western  tribes  in  our  own  days,  says :  — 

"  Almost  every  tribe  possesses  a  language  peculiarly  its  own ; 
and  what  seems  remarkable  is  the  fact,  that,  no  matter  how  long  or 
how  intimately  two  tribes  may  be  associated  with  each  other,  they 
each  preserve  and  employ  their  own  language ;  and  individuals  of 
one  tribe  rarely  become  versed  in  the  spoken  language  of  the  other, 
all  intercommunication  being  carried  on  either  by  interpreters,  or  in 
the  universal  sign-language.  This  is  noticeably  true  of  Cheyennes 
and  Arapahoes,  — two  tribes  which  for  years  have  lived  in  close 
proximity  to  each  other,  and  who  are  so  strongly  bound  together, 
offensively  and  defensively,  as  to  make  common  cause  against  the 
enemies  of  either,  particularly  against  the  white  man.  These  tribes 
encamp  together,  hunt  together,  and  make  war  together ;  yet  but 
a  comparatively  small  number  of  either  can  speak  fluently  the  lan- 
guage of  the  other.  I  remember  to  have  had  an  interview  at  one 
time  with  a  number  of  prominent  chiefs  belonging  to  five  different 
tribes,  — •  the  Cheyennes,  Kiowas,  Osages,  Kaws,  and  Apaches.  In 
communicating  with  them,  it  was  necessary  for  my  language  to  be 
interpreted  into  each  of  the  five  Indian  tongues,  no  representatives 
of  any  two  of  the  tribes  being  able  to  understand  the  language  of 
each  other." 

De  Soto,  in  his  invasion  of  Florida,  Georgia,  and  Ala- 
bama,—  as  we  have  noted,  —  had  valuable  service  from 
Juan  Ortiz,  as  an  interpreter,  in  1539  and  onwards.  Ortiz 
had,  eleven  years  before,  been  captured  by  the  Indians,  in 


INDIAN   INTERPRETERS.  181 

the  expedition  of  Narvaez,  and  then  had  lived  for  those 
years  among  them.  But  he  could  speak  only  the  Floridian 
language ;  and  we  are  told,  that,  in  a  council  or  talk  with  a 
company  of  natives  of  the  Chickasaws,  the  Georgians,  the 
Coosas,  and  the  Mobilians,  he  had  to  address  himself  to  a 
Chickasaw  who  knew  the  Floridian,  while  he  passed  the 
words  to  a  Georgian,  and  the  Georgian  to  a  Coosan,  the 
Coosan  to  a  Mobilian,  and  the  Mobilian  to  a  Chickasaw; 
and  so  for  each  reply  the  process  was  inverted. 

The  exigencies  imposed  by  the  variety  and  the  peculiar 
qualities  of  the  Indian  languages,  have  from  the  first  com- 
ing hither  of  Europeans  made  the  office  of  interpreters  a 
prime  necessity.  Circumstances  have  facilitated  the  ap- 
pearance from  time  to  time  of  a  class  of  men  with  very 
different  degrees  of  fitness  for  that  office.  One  is  puzzled 
to  imagine  how  the  early  navigators  who  reached  and 
landed  on  these  coasts,  and  had  transient  converse  with 
the  natives,  managed  to  hold  such  intelligible  intercourse 
with  them  as  is  reported  in  their  narratives.  It  must  have 
been  by  signs  and  gestures.  The  second  set  of  voyagers 
and  visitors  here  occasionally  found  some  help  in  commu- 
nicating with  the  savages  through  one  or  another  waif  who 
had  been  kidnapped  and  kept  on  board  the  vessel  of  a  pre- 
vious comer  to  the  coast.  In  a  few  cases  such  kidnapped 
savages  had  been  taken  to  Europe  for  a  while,  and  then 
brought  back,  —  like  Samoset,  the  Pilgrims'  friend  at  Ply- 
mouth, and  those  transported  from  Acadia  and  Canada  by 
the  French  explorers,  to  be  soon  referred  to.  This  was 
a  natural  and  indeed  a  necessary  resource  of  the  Euro- 
peans ;  not  requiring  any  violence  or  cruelty,  if  properly 
explained,  and  affording  the  only  possibility  for  facilitating 
intercourse.  The  European  navigators  could  generally  ob- 
tain willing  Indian  passengers  for  visiting  Europe. 

The  necessity  of  the  case  soon  furnished  the  skill  of  in- 
terpretation so  far  as  immediately  required.  It  is  obser- 
vable, however,  that  all  effective  and  really  intelligible 


182 

intercourse,  beyond  the  command  of  a  few  words  of  ordi- 
nary range,  which  has  been  reached  between  red  men 
and  white  men,  has  been  by  the  white  man's  learning  the 
language  of  the  red  man.  The  missionaries,  both  Catholic 
and  Protestant,  when  their  work  was  most  fresh  and  ear- 
nest and  hopeful,  gave  themselves  with  devoted  zeal  to  a 
mastery  of  the  Indian  tongues  for  instruction  and  preach- 
ing. For  the  lowest  forms  and  uses  of  intercourse,  —  as 
in  contention  and  traffic  and  barter, — it  was  comparatively 
easy  for  a  savage  and  a  European  to  learn  how  to  quarrel 
with  each  other,  to  cheat  and  be  cheated;  but  when  it 
came  to  the  higher  ends  of  intercourse,  —  in  instruction, 
—  the  white  man  found  his  task  to  lie  in  mastering  such 
resources  as  the  Indian  had  for  the  communication  of 
thought,  and  in  supplying  or  devising  methods  or  words 
for  conveying  ideas,  suggestions,  and  lessons  to  an  Indian 
on  objects  and  themes  wholly  new  to  him.  New  England 
in  its  early  years  furnished  several  examples  of  whites  who 
preached  with  great  facility  in  the  Indian  tongue,  while 
the  fact  has  been  mentioned  that  the  first  funds  of  Dart- 
mouth College  were  largely  raised  by  an  Indian  preaching 
in  Great  Britain. 

A  most  apt  and  curious  device,  in  almost  universal  use 
among  the  Indians,  and  showing  an  amazing  acuteness  and 
vivacity  of  mind  in  them,  is  their  power  to  communicate 
with  each  other,  with  full  intelligence,  by  sign  and  gestures 
and  symbols.  Very  many  white  experts  agree  in  describ- 
ing to  us  the  wonders  and  the  perfection  of  this  sign-lan- 
guage. In  the  multiplicity  and  variety  of  their  own  native 
tongues  and  dialects,  as  they  roamed  abroad,  it  would  have 
been  utterly  impossible  for  those  of  different  tribes  to  have 
held  any  intelligible  communication  by  words  :  they  would 
have  been  as  deaf-mutes,  had  it  not  been  for  a  similar  con- 
ventional sign-language.  This  had  no  resemblance  what- 
ever to  the  taught  finger-alphabet  used  by  deaf-mutes;  it 
was  wholly  of  gesture  and  symbol.  Shakspeare  —  who  has 


INDIAN  SIGN-LANGUAGE.  183 

images,  phrases,  and  descriptions  for  everything  —  admi- 
rably sets  it  forth  :  — 

"  I  cannot  too  much  muse, 

Such  shapes,  such  gesture,  and  such  sound,  expressing 
( Although  they  want  the  use  of  tongue)  a  kind 
Of  excellent  dumb  discourse."  l 

Indians  of  most  widely  separated  tribes  can  understand 
each  other  and  amuse  each  other,  in  perfect  silence,  with- 
out a  single  word, — though  with  an  occasional  grunt, — in 
giving  long  and  minute  relations  and  descriptions,  and  in 
telling  funny  tales.  They  will  impart  the  length  of  a  jour- 
ney, on  horse  or  foot ;  the  number  of  days  and  nights ;  de- 
scribe the  route,  and  countless  particulars.  A  semicircular 
motion  of  the  hand  from  horizon  to  horizon  marks  a  day ; 
the  head  reclined  on  the  hand,  a  night ;  the  finger  pointed 
to  space  in  the  sky  on  either  side  of  the  zenith,  the  hour  in 
the  day  ;  fingers  astride  and  galloping  signify  riding,  another 
motion  walking  rapidly  or  slowly ;  the  palm  of  the  hand 
passed  smoothly  down  the  face  and  body  describes  one  of 
the  fair  sex ;  one  finger  straightly  pointed  means  a  true 
speech  ;  two  fingers  forked  means  a  snake-tongue,  or  a  lie ; 
a  fore-finger  raised  to  the  ear  means,  "  I  have  heard,"  or 
"  I  approve  ; "  the  back  of  the  hand  on  the  ear,  "  I  did  not 
hear,"  or  "  I  believe  ;"  the  hand  laid  flat  on  the  lips  and 
then  raised,  means  a  prayer  or  an  oath.  And  this  sign- 
language  served  as  a  basis  or  a  guide  for  such  symbolic 
or  hieroglyphic  writing  as  the  Indians  had. 

When  General  Ouster  was  in  retirement  for  a  season  at 
Fort  Leavenworth,  he  made  a  study  of  the  sign-language 
and  became  a  great  proficient  in  it,  so  as  at  times  afterward 
to  dispense  with  an  interpreter.  Professor  J.  W.  Powell, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute,  has  for 
several  years  been  engaged  on  the  most  systematic  attempt 
and  method  that  have  as  yet  been  devised  for  the  study 
of  Indian  languages,  in  their  affinities  and  variances  of 

1  Tempest,  iii.  3. 


184         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

vocabulary  and  construction.  He  lias  sent  forth  an  elabo- 
rate syllabus,  with  blanks  and  directions  for  filling  them, 
to  guide  the  inquiries  of  intelligent  residents  among  the 
Indians,  hoping  to  receive  a  very  comprehensive  body  of 
returns.  Colonel  Mallory,  U.  S.  A.,  is  an  adept  in  the  sign- 
language,  and  has  made  valuable  contributions  upon  it. 

The  human  need  and  craving  for  fun,  jollity,  and  amuse- 
ment found  their  gratification  among  the  aborigines  in 
means  and  expressions  in  full  consistency  with  their  nature 
and  condition.  True,  we  should  not  look  for  a  prevailing 
mirthfulness  and  hilarity  among  such  a  race  of  savages  as 
occupied  this  continent.  It  is  said  that  young  camels  are 
the  only  animals  that  never  frisk,  sport,  or  gambol  in  the 
spring  of  their  existence ;  and  the  fact  is  referred  to  as 
a  forecast  of  the  sombreness  of  their  cheerless  service  as 
soon  as  they  are  able  to  bear  a  burden  and  to  tread  the  dry 
desert.  So  we  associate  with  our  Indians  in  their  native 
state  apathy,  reserve,  gloom,  and  sullenness  of  temper  in- 
consistent with  mirthfulness,  abandon,  and  any  spring  of 
joy  in  fun  and  revelry.  There  is  much  that  warrants 
this  general  view;  for  even  the  sports  of  the  Indians,  as 
we  shall  see,  have  a  grimness  and  severity  of  aspect  and 
method  in  full  keeping  with  their  prevailing  characteris- 
tics. But  there  are^  exceptional  individuals,  occasions,  and 
manifestations.  Even  without  any  concert  of  a  company 
among  them  for  a  set  purpose  of  play  or  revelry,  there 
is  an  impulse  in  them  for  any  easy  and  ready  method  for 
relieving  the  monotony  or  the  seriousness  of  their  experi- 
ence. When  only  two  or  a  small  group  of  them  are  rest- 
ing in  their  trampings  or  lounging  indolently  about  their 
lodges,  they  will  chaff  and  banter  each  other  for  anything 
that  can  be  turned  to  ridicule,  though  seldom  to  the  extent 
of  provoking  resentment.  The  Indians  are  much  addicted 
to  practical  joking,  ready  to  play  off  a  funny  or  an  annoying 
trick  on  each  other,  raising  a  roar  and  boisterous  response 
for  its  success.  There  is  large  opportunity  for  this  in  the 


INDIANS  GREAT  GAMBLERS.  185 

freedom  of  wild  life,  the  exposure  of  the  person,  the  lia- 
bility to  mishaps  and  accidents,  and  especially  when  any 
weaknesses  like  cowardice  or  boastfumess,  or  a  vaunting  of 
exploits — which  is  one  of  the  indulgences  most  habitual 
to  an  Indian  —  enables  a  companion  to  turn  the  laugh  upon 
him. 

Only  the  slightest  reference  possible  is  to  be  made  to  a 
subject  which,  if  presented  in  the  details  for  which  our  In- 
dian literature  affords  such  abundant  materials,  would  turn 
the  eyes  of  most  readers  from  the  page  before  them.  One 
of  the  most  painful  and  repulsive  characteristics  of  savage 
life,  in  its  debasing  influences,  —  contrasting  most  sharply 
with  all  the  resources  for  employing  time  and  thought,  and 
adding  softening  and  refining  charms  to  society  under  civil- 
ization, —  is  the  free  license  for  impurity  and  measureless 
immorality.  The  obscenity  of  the  savages  is  unchecked  in 
its  revolting  and  disgusting  exhibitions.  Sensuality  seeks 
no  covert.  If  the  Indian  languages  are  wholly  destitute, 
as  we  are  told,  of  words  of  profanity  and  blasphemy,  there 
is  no  lack  of  terms  in  them,  as  neither  is  there  of  signs, 
symbols,  and  acts  in  open  day,  for  the  foulest  display  of 
indecency  and  beastliness. 

The  Indians  are  universally  persistent  and  greedy  gam- 
blers. This  one  vice,  at  least,  they  did  not  learn  from  the 
whites.  It  was  native  among  them  in  its  practice,  and  they 
throw  into  it  an  earnestness  and  a  passion  rarely  mani- 
fested so  intensely  and  widely  among  white  men.  For  the 
most  part,  gaming  is  confined  to  the  males ;  but  squaws  are 
fond  of  catching  a  sly  hour  and  place  for  it  when  the  eyes 
of  their  masters  are  withdrawn.  The  squaws  themselves 
are  not  infrequently  the  stake  between  the  players,  for 
there  is  nothing  of  value  to  the  Indian  which  he  will  not 
put  at  hazard.  This  passion  may  indicate  a  longing  for 
relief  from  the  tediousness  of  that  supine  and  listless  in- 
dolence which  the  Indian  indulges  when  not  hunting  or 
fighting.  But  as  this  utter  vacancy  and  torpidness  is  also 


186        THE  INDIAN  IN   HIS  CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

a  fond  passion  of  his,  the  impulse  for  gaming,  which  over- 
masters it,  must  be  something  stronger  and  more  goading. 
The  playing-cards  of  the  white  men  are  greedily  seized 
upon  by  such  of  the  savages  —  and  they  are  very  many  on 
the  frontiers,  in  California  and  Oregon  and  in  Washington 
Territory — as  have  caught  the  art  of  their  use  from  sea- 
men and  miners.  Nor  is  the  Indian  confined  in  playing 
with  them  to  the  distinctive  games  common  to  the  white 
men.  They  serve  him  well  through  his  own  ingenuity 
within  a  large  range  for  chance,  though  they  would  not 
probably  in  his  own  hands  derive  much  service  for  calcu- 
lation and  skill.  Doubtless  he  knows  well  how  to  turn 
them  to  account  for  "tricks  that  are  dark."  His  own 
methods  and  implements  for  gaming  are  to  white  men 
either  trivial  or  uninteresting,  though  sometimes  exciting. 
Sleight-of-hand,  agility,  velocity  of  movement,  a  quick  eye, 
and  supple  muscles  in  manipulating  the  sticks  or  stones  of 
his  simple  inventory  serve  his  purpose.  The  working  of 
intense  excitement  and  passion,  and  the  complete  concen- 
tration of  all  his  faculties  in  gaming  show  how  absorbing  is 
the  occupation  to  himself.  Feats  of  strength  and  agility, 
running,  lifting,  archery,  pitching  the  quoit,  and  practis- 
ing contortions,  athletics,  and  difficult  poises  of  the  body 
give  him  a  wide  range  for  exercise  with  one  or  more 
companions. 

Beyond  these  private  methods  for  occupying  idle  hours 
or  finding  stimulus  and  excitement  in  the  ordinary  run 
of  life,  the  natives  fairly  rival  the  civilized  races  in  the 
number  and  variety  of  their  jubilant,  festive,  and  com- 
memorative occasions,  independently  of  those  connected 
with  warfare.  There  were  and  are  general  similarities 
in  the  occasions  for  merriment,  games,  and  periodical 
festivals  of  commemoration,  among  the  tribes  all  over 
the  continent.  But  there  are  many  such  that  are  spe- 
cial and  distinctive  of  single  tribes  or  of  a  group  of  tribes. 
There  is  not  much  that  is  interesting  or  attractive  for 


INDIAN  GAMES  AND   AMUSEMENTS.  1ST 

relation  in  either  class  of  them  for  us.  Violent  bodily 
exercise  in  almost  superhuman  strainings  of  nerve  and 
muscle ;  yellings  and  howlings,  accompanied  with  rattles 
and  drums  ;  gormandizings  on  their  rude  and  miscella- 
neous viands,  the  dog-feast  having  the  pre-eminence ;  run- 
ning for  a  goal ;  pitching  a  bar ;  driving  a  ball  by  parties 
on  divided  sides,  whose  heated  rivalry  wlien  they  are 
huddled  in  close  struggles  barely  keeps  the  distinction 
between  play  and  mortal  combat,  and  occasionally  a  con- 
test similar  to  that  of  the  prize-ring  among  the  whites, — 
these  constitute  the  more  stirring  and  festive  gayeties  of 
the  Indians.  More  calm  and  dignified  observances  there 
are,  connected  with  periodical  and  distinctive  festivals 
among  various  tribes.  A  happy  occasion  is  found  by 
some  at  the  season  when  the  green  corn  is  in  the  milk: 
the  sweetness  and  simplicity  of  the  repast  would  seem  to 
engage  the  gentler  sentiments.  There  is  much  resemblance 
also  to  the  New  England  Thanksgiving  in  the  pleasant  rec- 
ognition of  the  maize  harvesting,  the  squaws  doing  the 
ingathering;  while  the  husking,  and  the  "trailing"  or 
braiding  of  the  ears  in  strings  by  the  inner  husk  was 
an  amusement  for  both  sexes  and  all  ages.  Graver  still, 
and  often  with  subdued  manifestations,  were  certain  lugu- 
brious occasions  of  fasting  and  lamenting  connected  with 
commemorations  of  their  ancestors  and  relatives,  or  the 
re-disposal  of  the  remains  of  their  dead.  Though  these 
occasions  generally  ended  in  a  breaking  of  the  fast,  there 
were  often  in  them  true  solemnity,  thoughtfulness,  and 
right  sentiments.  If  we  can  separate  from  all  these  occa- 
sions the  drawbacks  incident  to  the  wildness  and  rough- 
ness of  the  mode  of  life,  the  untutored  tastes,  the  poverty 
of  material,  and  the  hold  of  tradition  with  its  arbitrary 
requisitions  on  the  minds  of  the  savages,  we  shall  con- 
clude that  the  ends  which  they  had  in  view  were  as  nearly 
compassed  in  their  festivities  as  are  the  intents  of  civil- 
ized people  in  their  most  elaborate  materials  and  methods 


188         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

of  amusement,  relaxation,  or  observance.  Cruelty  in  some 
form  was  apt  to  intrude  itself  even  upon  the  amusements 
of  the  savages.  Where  this  was  excluded,  the  whites  who 
have  been  observers  of  these  spectacles  —  even  of  some 
which  are  jealously  reserved  from  the  eyes  of  strangers — 
have  reported  them  as  often  pleasing  for  their  vivacity, 
from  the  evidently  keen  enjoyment  of  them,  and  for  their 
grateful  relief  from  the  monotony  of  a  grovelling  life.  Oc- 
casionally a  gifted  genius  among  the  savages,  filled  with 
the  traditions  and  skilfully  turning  to  account  the  super- 
stitions of  his  tribe,  with  all  the  spirit  and  imagination, 
though  lacking  the  metric  and  rhythmic  art,  of  the  poet, 
would  engage  for  hours  the  rapt  attention  of  his  hushed 
auditors,  as  in  his  generation  he  was  made  the  repository, 
for  transmission,  of  their  legendary  lore. 

The  preparations  for  the  hunt  and  the  return  from  it 
when  it  had  been  successful  —  with  exception  only  of  the 
going  and  the  return  of  war-parties  —  were  the  most  noisy 
and  demonstrative  occasions  of  Indian  life.  The  skilled 
watching  of  the  signs  of  the  seasons,  with  their  keen  ob- 
servance of  the  periodicity  which  rules  in  all  the  phe- 
nomena of  Nature,  and  the  reports  of  their  scouts  sent 
only  in  one  or  two  directions,  gave  them  due  notice  of  the 
day  when  the  beasts  or  the  fowl  — "  who  know  their  ap- 
pointed times" —  were  ready  to  be  turned  to  the  uses  of 
their  more  privileged  kindred  the  red  men.  Their  wea- 
pons and  foot-gear  were  ready.  The  squaws  were  to  ac- 
company them  to  flay  the  victims  and  to  secure  the  meat. 
The  night  or  the  day  before  the  start,  some  simple  observ- 
ances were  held  to  secure  propitious  omens.  The  older 
braves  consulted  the  secrets  of  their  "  medicine-bags," 
and  the  youths  who  were  to  make  their  first  trial  of  early 
manhood  were  like  dogs  in  the  leash.  The  hunters  knew 
where  to  go,  how  to  creep  in  noiseless  secrecy,  and  when 
to  raise  the  shout.  They  had  agreed  whether  they  were 
to  rush  in  free  coursing  upon  their  game,  either  to  outrun 


THE   HUNTING-SEASON.  189 

them  or  to  strike  a  panic  among  them,  or  whether  to  sur- 
round them  and  drive  them  into  a  circle,  or  to  some  pit 
or  precipice  or  snare.  They  did  not  pause  a  moment, 
where  the  animals  were  tempting  in  number,  to  secure 
any  one  of  them  which  a  hunter  had  struck  down  or  se- 
verely crippled.  Each  hunter  knew  his  own  arrow,  or,  if 
armed  with  a  gun,  the  direction  of  his  bullet ;  and  when 
the  wild  scrimmage  was  over  there  was  no  dispute  or 
rivalry,  as  each  selected  his  own  spoils.  Care  was  had,  if 
possible,  to  gather  enough  for  a  gluttonous  feast  on  their 
return  to  their  lodges,  and  for  the  season's  store.  With 
the  scrupulous  economy  before  referred  to,  so  long  as  the 
natives  had  not  learned  wastefulness  from  the  whites, 
they  put  every  fragment  of  the  animal  to  some  good  use. 
More  than  in  any  other  demand  upon  their  strength  or 
dignity,  the  male  savages  were  ready,  on  the  occasion  of 
a  return  from  the  hunt,  to  share  the  burden  of  the 
squaws.  Sometimes,  if  the  game  had  led  them  to  a  con- 
siderable distance  from  their  lodges,  it  was  necessary  to 
cache,  or  bury  in  concealment,  all  that  they  were  unable 
to  convey,  returning  for  it  at  their  leisure.  It  was  only  at 
a  special  season  of  the  year  that  different  species  of  game 
were  in  good  flesh,  and  that  the  fleeces  of  the  animals 
were  in  proper  condition  for  preserving  the  hides  or  skins. 
The  ranges  of  the  different  species  of  game  —  the  buffalo, 
the  moose,  the  caribou,  the  mountain  sheep,  the  elk,  the 
otter — were  sometimes  limited.  The  bear,  the  deer,  the 
beaver,  and  several  smaller  creatures  were  widely  distri- 
buted. The  more  dependent  any  tribe  was  upon  hunt- 
ing, rather  than  upon  other  food,  the  more  wild  were  its 
habits  and  the  more  robust  its  physique. 

But  life  among  these  men  of  the  woods  and  streams  had 
its  dark  side,  —  dismal  and  appalling  in  its  dreads  and 
sufferings.  Not  to  these  untutored  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, more  than  to  the  civilized,  was  existence  relieved 
from  real  or  from  imaginary  and  artificial  woes.  The  In- 


190        THE  INDIAN  IN  HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

dians,  through  the  whole  continent  and  under  all  variety 
of  circumstances,  were  and  are  the  victims  of  enfeebling 
and  distressing  superstitions.  These  are  associated  with 
the  most  serious  and  the  most  trifling  incidents  of  their 
lives.  They  find  dark  omens  and  forebodings  not  only  in 
events,  but  even  in  their  own  random  thoughts.  Dreams 
have  a  deeper,  a  more  serious,  a  more  potent  influence  over 
them  than  do  any  occurrences  and  experiences  of  the  noon- 
day light.  They  brood  for  hours  of  keen  and  anxious 
musing  over  the  interpretation  of  any  vision  of  a  night,  — 
its  counsel,  command,  or  warning  to  them.  It  is  in  their 
dreams  that  their  own  guiding  or  guardian  spirit  comes 
to  them.  His  own  revered  and  familiar  fetich,  or  especial 
companion  for  life,  comes  to  each  of  the  youth  passing  on 
to  manhood,  in  some  special  dream  connected  with  his 
period  of  retirement  and  fasting,  as  he  is  in  training  for 
a  brave.  It  may  come  through  the  shape  of  some  animal 
or  bird,  which  henceforth  is  the  cherished  confidant  of  the 
rest  of  his  life. 

Among  the  mysterious  treasures  of  the  "  medicine-bag  " 
is  some  article,  meaningless  to  all  but  the  owner,  which  is 
identified  with  this  dream  messenger.  The  course  of  ac- 
tion of  an  Indian  in  some  of  the  most  important  of  his 
voluntary  proceedings  is  often  decided  by  some  direction 
believed  to  have  been  made  to  him  in  a  dream.  If  forced 
by  companionship  or  necessity  to  do  anything  against  which 
his  superstitious  musings  have  warned  him,  he  complies 
with  a  faintness  of  heart  which  unmans  him  far  more  than 
does  a  faltering  courage  in  the  thick  of  carnage.  A  plea- 
sant dream  will  irradiate  his  breast  and  his  features  for 
long  days  afterwards.  He  cheerfully  complies  with  any 
acts  of  self-denial  to  which  he  is  prompted  through  this 
medium.  A  pleasant  story  is  told  of  a  chief  of  the  Five 
Nations  in  warm  friendship  with  Sir  William  Johnson, 
British  agent  among  those  tribes.  Seeing  once  the  portly 
officer  arrayed  in  a  splendid  scarlet  uniform,  with  chapeau 


SUPERSTITIONS   OF   THE   INDIANS.  191 

and  feather  and  epaulets  and  gold  lace  just  received  from 
England,  the  chief  suggestively  assured  him  soon  after  that 
he  had  dreamed  a  dream.  On  being  questioned  as  to  its 
purport,  he  candidly  said  that  he  had  dreamed  that  Sir 
William  was  to  make  him  a  present  of  a  similar  array. 
Of  course  the  politic  officer  fulfilled  the  dream.  After  a 
proper  lapse  of  time  Sir  William  also  communicated  a 
dream  of  his  own,  to  the  effect  that  the  chief  would  pre- 
sent him  with  a  large  stretch  of  valuable  land.  The  chief 
at  once  conferred  the  gift,  quietly  remarking  that  the  white 
man  "  dreamed  too  hard  for  the  Indian." 

The  significance  which  the  superstition  of  the '  Indian 
gives  as  omens  to  signs  in  heaven  among  the  stars  and 
clouds,  or  to  aspects  or  incidents  or  objects  which  haply 
attract  his  notice  around  him,  will  either  quicken  him  to 
joy  or  burden  him  with  terror.  The  boldest  warrior  will 
wake  with  shudderings  from  a  profound  sleep,  and  nothing 
will  bend  his  will  to  a  course  of  which  he  has  thus  been 
instructed  to  beware.  His  own  mind  in  fear  or  hope  gives 
an  ill  or  a  propitious  significance  to  things  which  have  in 
themselves  no  suggestion  of  either  character.  The  dream 
of  a  brave  whose  character  or  counsel  carries  weight  with 
it  will  often  decide  the  issue  of  peace  or  war  for  a  tribe. 
As  superstition,  like  most  forms  of  folly  and  error,  pre- 
dominates with  shadows  and  fears  over  all  brighter  fancies 
which  it  brings  to  the  mind,  so  the  Indian's  reliance  upon 
his  visionary  experiences  tends  to  a  prevailing  melancholy. 
The  traditions  of  his  tribe,  also,  were  inwrought  with  some 
superstitions  which  on  occasions  turned  a  bright  or  a  dark 
counsel  in  emergencies,  and  served  to  inspirit  or  to  depress 
them  in  projected  enterprises. 

The  Jesuit  missionaries  among  the  Indians  soon  learned 
that  some  of  the  most  embarrassing  conditions  of  their 
residence,  and  some  of  the  most  threatening  dangers  to 
which  they  were  exposed,  —  thwarting  their  efforts  at  con- 
version, and  keeping  their  lives  in  momentary  perils, — came 


192        THE  INDIAN  IN  HIS  CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

from  the  superstitious  suspicions  of  the  natives.  Cases 
of  individual  disease  did  not  alarm  them ;  but  anything 
like  an  epidemic,  contagious,  or  prevailing  malady  they 
always  ascribed  to  an  evil  charm.  They  bent  a  lowering 
gaze  upon  the  missionary  as  he  went  on  his  errands  of 
mercy,  suspecting  him  of  communicating  disease.  Often 
did  the  zealous  Father  in.  cunning  secrecy  draw  the  sign  of 
the  cross  on  the  forehead  of  the  sick  infant ;  for  even  bap- 
tism came  to  be  dreaded  under  some  circumstances,  as  if 
that  also  were  a  charm.  The  darker  passions  of  treachery, 
revenge,  cherished  animosities,  cunning  watchfulness  for 
opportunity  to  gratify  a  grudge,  and  the  practice  of  dis- 
simulation were,  of  course,  as  human  proclivities,  found  in 
their  full  power  among  the  men  of  the  woods.  Among  the 
romantic  views  which  enter  into  the  prevailing  conceptions 
of  savage  life  is  that  which  attributes  to  the  Indian  a  some- 
what remarkable  exercise  of  gratitude  in  keeping  in  long 
remembrance  any  service  or  favor  towards  him,  and  wait- 
ing for  an  opportunity  to  repay  it.  Much  will  depend 
upon  the  sort  of  service  or  favor  thus  to  be  compen- 
sated. But  there  is  nothing  peculiar  to  the  savage  in  this 
manifestation. 

The  advocates  of  a  resolute  and  vigorous  military  policy 
by  our  Government,  as  alone  effective  in  the  management 
of  our  Indian  tribes,  would  pronounce  it  a  most  serious 
omission  from  a  volume  covering  our  whole  subject  if  it 
failed  to  draw  strongly,  and  in  full  and  harrowing  detail, 
the  horrors  and  barbarities  of  Indian  warfare,  and  the 
characteristic  qualities  of  the  savage  as  above  all  things 
a  born  fighter,  blood-thirsty,  ferocious,  and  destitute  of  all 
human  feelings  in  his  brutal  conflicts  with  his  own  race 
or  with  the  whites.  Perhaps  as  much  as  most  readers  will 
care  to  peruse  has  been  already  put  before  them  on  pre- 
vious pages  in  reference  to  the  inhumanity  and  barbarity 
of  the  savage  in  warfare,  to  his  fiendish  torturings  of  his 
victims,  and  to  his  frenzied  passion,  unslaked  even  by  the 


THE   INDIAN   A   BORN   FIGHTER.  193 

flesh  and  blood  of  his  foe.  Enough  more  will  needs  be 
said  or  recognized  in  pages  yet  to  follow,  in  the  various 
divisions  of  our  subject,  to  keep  in  our  minds  these  repul- 
sive qualities  of  the  Indian  as  a  fighter.  In  general  it  is 
to  be  said,  that,  apart  from  those  qualities  as  a  torturer  and 
a  cannibal,  —  which  are  simply  inherent  in  full  barbar- 
ism, —  the  savage  Indian,  like  the  civilized  white  man, 
uses  against  an  enemy,  in  warfare,  all  the  arts  and  imple- 
ments— the  guile,  the  ambush,  the  stratagem,  the  surprise, 
the  deceit,  the  weapons,  and  the  flames — which  he  can  put 
to  his  service.  Lacking  the  steel  sword,  knife,  and  bayo- 
net, the  pistol,  firelock,  and  cannon,  the  armor,  the  horse, 
and  the  bloodhound,  of  the  European,  his  armory  was 
drawn  from  the  stones,  the  flint-barbed  arrow  and  spear, 
occasionally  tipped  with  poison,  the  sharp  fish-bone,  the 
tomahawk,  and  the  war-club.  He  did  the  best  he  could 
under  the  circumstances.  The  "calumet,"  first  mentioned 
under  this  Indian  name  by  De  Soto,  is  familiar  to  us  as 
the  emblem  of  peace  when  smoked  and  passed  from  hand 
to  hand  in  an  interview  or  council.  This  pipe  was  often 
lavishly  ornamented. 

There  is  occasion  here,  in  connection  with  the  relation 
of  the  other  incidents  and  elements  of  savage  life,  to  note 
not  so  much  the  methods  as  the  customs  of  the  savage 
tribes  in  preparation  for  and  in  the  return  from  their  fields 
of  blood.  The  savage,  in  all  the  northern  parts  of  our 
continent,  was  and  is  a  born  fighter.  A  state  of  warfare 
is  his  chronic  condition.  So  far  as  it  relieves  the  burden 
of  reproach  on  the  white  man  in  his  long  and  generally, 
but  not  always,  prevailing  conflict  with  the  savages, —  and 
the  relief  is  a  considerable  and  a  serious  one,  —  we  have 
to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  Indians  have  been  each 
others'  most  virulent  and  fatal  foes.  They  were  found 
to  be  fighting  each  other  when  the  white  man  came  among 
them;  and  each  and  all  the  tribes,  as  one  by  one  they 
have  been  brought  into  communication,  had  stories  to  tell 

13 


194         THE   INDIAN  IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

of  previous  and  recent  conflicts,  and  traditions  of  others 
running  back  into  undated  periods.  It  would  indeed  be 
difficult  to  say  whether  more  of  havoc  had  been  wrought 
among  the  Indians  in  their  internecine  strifes  than  by  the 
white  man  in  his  comprehensive  warfare  against  them. 
From  the  formation  of  our  own  National  Government  its 
humane  services  have  been  often  engaged  in  very  embar- 
rassing and  sometimes  costly  efforts  to  repress  the  hostili- 
ties between  various  tribes.  These  strifes  have  generally 
been  hereditary,  with  a  long  entail.  The  Indian's  memory, 
reinforced  by  faithful  transmission  through  the  traditions 
of  the  elders,  is  for  these  matters  an  equivalent  substitute 
for  records.  Only  within  quite  recent  years  our  Govern- 
ment came  as  an  umpire  and  a  pacificator  into  one  of  these 
hereditary  feuds  between  the  Sioux,  or  Dakotas,  and  the 
Chippeways,  in  the  Northwest.  Neither  of  the  parties 
could  date  the  beginning  of  the  alienation ;  or,  at  least, 
each  of  them  referred  it  to  a  different  cause  in  its  origin. 
The  successive  forts  built  by  our  Government  at  the  junction 
of  Western  rivers  and  other  strategic  points,  while  mainly 
designed  to  aid  its  own  purposes,  have  often  served  to  over- 
awe or  prove  a  refuge  for  a  prowling  or  a  hounded  tribe 
of  hostiles  against  hostiles. 

With  such  training  for  the  field  of  conflict  and  blood  the 
savages  were  always  ready  in  preparation  for  any  new 
scene  and  enterprise.  They  had,  as  well  as  white  men, 
their  military  code,  with  rules  and  principles,  their  system 
of  signals,  their  challenges,  —  except  where  a  bold  surprise 
was  essential, — their  conditions  and  flags  of  truce,  their 
cartels,  and  terms  of  peace  through  reparation  and  trib- 
ute. We  are  familiar  enough  with  the  aboriginal  figures 
of  speech,  the  "burying"  or  the  "lifting"  the  hatchet. 
"  Laying  down  the  hatchet "  signified  the  temporary  sus- 
pension of  fighting,  as  in  a  truce.  "  Covering  the  hatchet" 
was  condoning  a  cause  of  feud  by  presents.  It  is  probably 
a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  savages  in  their  own  tribal 


PREPARATION   OP  A   WAR-PARTY.  195 

warfare  always  sought  to  come  upon  the  enemy  in  secret 
surprise  :  this  was  their  method  with  the  whites  ;  but  most 
frequently  the  savage  enemy  had  reason  to  expect  a  blow. 
Generally,  too,  while  with  provocation  and  a  reasonable 
hope  of  success  a  single  tribe  would  take  the  war-path 
alone,  alliances  were  sought  for  by  them,  especially  when 
their  foes  were  multiplied.  There  was  in  the  latter  al- 
ternative full  deliberation  upon  strength,  resources,  and 
methods.  Messengers  passed  between  these  allied  tribes; 
the  council  fires  were  lighted  ;  the  pipe  was  passed  from 
mouth  to  mouth ;  intervals  of  deep  silence  were  observed, 
for  thoughtfulness  and  the  summoning  of  wise  speech. 
There  was  no  clamor,  no  interruption  of  a  speaker,  whose 
forest  eloquence  enlarged  upon  grievances  and  deepened 
hate,  roused  courage  by  satire  upon  the  cowardice  of  the 
enemy  or  flattery  of  the  prowess  of  the  hearers.  When 
the  speaker  closed,  a  single  deep  ejaculation  was  the  sole 
comment  on  his  words.  After  due  pauses,  as  many  ora- 
tors as  were  moved  to  utterance  were  patiently  heard. 
Those  who  had  best  proved  their  bravery  and  ardor  were 
most  closely  listened  to.  There  was  no  place  for  cow- 
ards, though  words  of  caution  and  hesitancy  were  not 
discountenanced. 

The  scene  in  an  Indian  village  the  night  preceding  the 
going  forth  to  the  fray  was  hideous  and  diabolic.  The 
painted,  bedizened,  and  yelling  fiends  lashed  themselves 
into  a  fury  of  passion,  with  contorted  features  and  writh- 
ing gestures,  striking  their  hatchets  into  the  crimson  war- 
post,  and  imitating  the  laments  and  shrieks  which  they 
intended  to  draw  from  a  mastered  foe.  The  clatter  of 
drum  and  rattle  is  in  keeping  with  their  tuneless  music. 
Thus  with  all  the  aspect  and  array  of  devils  they  prepared 
themselves  to  strike  the  blow.  The  aged  and  feeble,  the 
women  and  children,  were  left  in  the  lodges  to  await  in 
dread  the  return  of  the  braves;  never,  however,  disheart- 
ening them,  but  following  them  with  rallying  parting  cheers 


196 

of  praise  and  promise.  The  "war-whoop"  is  a  phrase 
which  has  had  terrific  meaning  for  those  who  have  quailed 
before  its  pandemonium  fury.  True  to  their  proud  kinship 
with  the  animals,  the  braves  borrow  from  bears,  wolves, 
owls,  and  the  rest  those  howls  and  yelps,  those  shriekings 
and  barkings,  by  which  to  strike  a  panic  through  their  vic- 
tims and  to  paralyze  their  energies. 

In  such  of  the  Indian  towns  as  were  strongly  fortified 
by  palisades  there  was  often  occasion  for  much  strategy  in 
attack  and  defence.  We  need  not  follow  this  war-party, 
nor  rehearse  its  doings,  but  take  it  up  again  at  its  return 
to  the  village.  Those  who  are  there  on  the  watch  for  them 
are  informed  first  by  scouts  sent  in  advance  of  the  party. 
The  first  announcements,  made  in  gloom  and  wailings  if 
the  occasion  calls  for  it,  are  of  the  disasters  of  the  ex- 
pedition, of  the  number  and  names  of  the  slaughtered,  or 
of  those  left  as  captives,  of  their  own  side.  The  women 
who  are  bereaved  by  these  losses  are  allowed  full  indul- 
gence in  their  screams  and  lamentings,  finding  in  the 
sharpening  of  their  grief  a  keenness  for  the  savage  pas- 
sions which  they  are  soon  to  wreak  on  victims,  if  any 
such  come  in  as  captives. 

When  the  full  war-party  comes  in,  if  it  has  been  even 
but  moderately  successful,  all  these  laments  must  yield  to 
boastful  shouts  of  elated  triumph.  The  warriors  rehearse 
their  exploits,  with  mimicry  of  their  own  actions  and  those 
of  the  enemy.  The  scalp-locks  are  swung  in  the  air,  the 
bloody  weapons  are  brandished,  and  the  scenes  connected 
with  those  of  the  night  preceding  the  start  on  the  war-path 
are  re-enacted.  If  there  are  prisoners,  their  fate  is  direful. 
Occasionally  the  privilege  is  granted  to  any  one  of  the 
tribe,  man  or  woman,  who  has  been  bereaved  of  a  rela- 
tive, to  claim  that  one  or  more  may  be  spared  for  adop- 
tion in  place  of  the  deceased;  and,  according  to  circum- 
stances, the  rescued  captive  may  become  a  hard-tasked 
slave,  or  be  received  in  full  friendship  as  a  member  of  the 


THE  GANTLET  AND  THE  TORTURE.          197 

tribe.  According  to  circumstances,  too,  he  will  hence- 
forward be  on  the  watch  for  an  opportunity  to  escape,  or, 
becoming  reconciled  to  his  lot,  will  make  the  best  of 
it.  The  methods  of  torment  are  graduated  by  processes 
leading  on  through  intensified  trials  of  endurance  and  sen- 
sibility to  a  result  which,  while  stilling  the  tide  of  life, 
shall  dismiss  the  spirit  in  a  quiver  of  agony.  The  victims 
of  this  barbarity  are  usually  first  subjected  to  the  running 
of  the  gantlet  between  two  defined  goals,  the  women  and 
the  children  lining  the  way,  inflicting  blows,  with  bitter 
taunts. 

It  is  when,  under  the  insults,  the  lashings,  the  kicks, 
and  maulings  of  this  preliminary  ordeal,  and  in  the  fiercer 
agonies  of  the  stake,  the  brave  can  maintain  his  calm  and 
serenity  of  countenance,  with  exalted  spirit,  taunting  his 
tormentors  because  their  devices  are  so  weak  and  harm- 
less, boasting  of  the  number  of  them  whom  he  has  treated 
in  the  same  way,  and  raising  his  death-song  above  their 
yellings,  —  it  is  then  that  they  reward  him  with  their 
admiration.  This  may  prompt  a  generous  enemy  —  not  in 
pity  perhaps,  but  in  responsive  nobleness  of  spirit — to  deal 
the  final  blow  of  deliverance.  The  coward,  who  shrinks 
and  weeps,  and  pleads  for  mercy,  only  raises  the  scorn 
of  his  tormentors,  and  leads  them  to  prolong  and  multi- 
ply the  ingenuities  of  cruelty. 

This  sketch  of  the  war-customs  of  the  savages  conforms 
more  particularly  to  the  periods  preceding  their  inter- 
course with  the  Europeans,  and  to  those  after  the  races 
were  brought  into  their  earlier  strifes.  Among  the  West- 
ern and  Northern  tribes  these  war-usages  have  continued 
substantially  unchanged  to  our  own  times ;  but  slight 
modifications  have  come  into  them  within  this  century. 
There  have  been  occasions  in  very  recent  conflicts  be- 
tween the  whites  and  the  Indians,  when,  under  the  goad- 
ings  of  some  deep-felt  sense  of  wrong  and  perfidy  in  their 
treatment,  all  the  most  furious  passions  of  the  savages 


198         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

seem  to  have  been  kindled  into  an  intensified  rage  and 
desperation.  Military  officers  now  in  service,  and  fron- 
tiersmen on  our  border  lines,  testify  that  the  war-spirit, 
with  all  its  attendant  savage  characteristics,  has  not 
been  mollified  or  subdued  in  some  of  the  tribes,  but  has 
rather  been  exasperated  by  the  experience  of  the  white 
man's  potency,  and  by  the  dark  forebodings  of  des- 
tiny for  the  red  race.  The  slaughterings  which  we  call 
massacres,  when  wrought  by  the  Indians,  have  been  as 
hideous  and  as  comprehensive  in  their  fury  within  the 
lifetime  of  the  present  generation  as  were  any  on  the 
records  of  the  past.  Our  military  men  have  found  their 
savage  foes  as  quick  in  stratagem  and  as  artful  in  their 
devices  as  if  they  had  been  learning  in  their  own  school 
something  equivalent  to  the  modern  civilized  advance  in 
the  science  of  soldiery.  Our  campaigners  against  a  body 
of  hostiles,  when  seeking  to  conceal  their  motions  and 
trackings,  have  learned  to  look  keenly  towards  all  the 
surrounding  hill-tops  to  discover  any  of  the  "  smoke-sig- 
nals," made  from  moist  grass  and  leaves  with  a  smoulder- 
ing fire,  by  which  the  ingenious  foe,  hidden  in  their  re- 
treats, make  known  to  their  separate  watch-parties  the 
direction  and  the  numbers  of  their  jealously  observed 
white  pursuers.  The  frontier  settler,  telling  his  expe- 
riences of  the  prowling  Indian  thief,  incendiary,  and  mur- 
derer, will  not  admit  that  the  savage  has  been  either 
awed  or  humanized  by  feeling  the  power  or  influence  of 
the  white  man.  The  ingenuity  of  the  Indian  is  taxed  in 
arraying  himself  in  war-paint,  especially  as  he  has  no 
mirror  to  aid  him.  Yery  few  of  our  natives  seem  to 
have  practised  tattooing,  except  of  some  small  totem- 
figure  on  a  limb.  Le  Moyne,  in  his  illustrations,  repre- 
sents the  Florida  Indians  as  elaborately  and  even  artisti- 
cally tattooed  over  the  whole  body,  except  the  face. 

The  first   fire-arms   that  came   into   the   hands  of  our 
savages,  giving  them  the  aid  of  the  white  man's  imple- 


INDIAN  TRIBAL  GOVERNMENT.  199 

ments  for  warfare,  were  those  which  the  Dutch  on  the 
Hudson,  about  the  year  1613  and  subsequently,  bartered 
with  the  Iroquois  or  the  Mohawks  for  peltry.  This 
was  most  grievously  complained  of  afterwards  by  the 
French  in  Canada  and  the  English  on  the  Atlantic  sea- 
board as  an  act  of  real  treachery,  for  the  sake  of  gain, 
against  the  common  security  of  all  European  colonists. 
The  French  and  the  English  protested  against  it,  and 
vainly  sought  by  prohibitions  and  enactments  to  pre- 
vent any  further  traffic  of  the  sort.  The  mischief  was 
done.  The  savage  now  felt  himself  to  be  on  an  equality 
with  the  white  man,  of  whose  artificial  thunder  and  light- 
ning he  no  longer  stood  in  superstitious  awe.  Not 
again  were  the  savages  to  quail  before  the  report  and 
the  deadly  missile,  as  they  did  on  that  first  campaign  of 
the  French,  when  Champlain,  near  the  lake  to  which  he 
gave  his  name,  fired  his  arquebuse  with  fatal  effect.  The 
Indian's  eye  and  aim  with  the  rifle  have  heightened  his 
skill  and  prowess  as  a  fighter.  As  we  shall  note  further 
on,  upon  the  plea  that  as  game  has  become  scarcer  and 
more  timid  the  bow  and  arrow  have  lost  their  use,  the 
Indians  on  the  reservations  and  under  treaty  and  pen- 
sions with  our  Government,  some  of  whom  are  of  worse 
than  dubious  loyalty,  have  been  freely  supplied  with  the 
best  revolvers,  rifles,  and  fixed  metallic  ammunition. 
Fierce  have  been  the  protests  from  our  soldiers  and  fron- 
tiersmen, that  the  instruments  of  their  annoyance  and 
destruction  come  from  our  national  armories. 

There  has  always  been  a  general  tendency  among  the 
Europeans  here  to  overestimate  the  presence,  method,  and 
influence  of  anything  to  be  properly  called  government  in 
the  internal  administration  of  Indian  tribes.  The  near- 
est approach  to  what  we  regard  as  organization,  represen- 
tation and  joint  fellowship  among  the  Indians  is  presented 
to  us  in  what  is  known  as  "  The  Iroquois  League,"  which 
has  had  an  imaginative  delineation  in  the  exquisite  poem  of 


200         THE   INDIAN  IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

"Hiawatha,"  and  proximately  a  truthful  historical  descrip- 
tion by  the  late  Lewis  H.  Morgan,  —  an  adopted  member 
of  the  tribe,  and  familiar  from  early  years  with  its  rich 
traditions.  There  seems  to  have  been  more  of  system  and 
method  in  the  confederated  League  of  the  Tribes  compos- 
ing the  union,  than  there  was  of  like  organization  in  each 
of  its  component  parts. 

In  the  several  independent  or  even  affiliated  Indian 
tribes  with  which  the  Europeans  came  into  contact  from 
the  first  colonization,  the  latter  assumed  that  there  was 
a  tolerably  well-arranged  method  in  each  of  them  for  the 
administration  of  affairs  of  peace  and  war  by  a  chief  and 
his  council,  who  had  an  almost  arbitrary  authority ;  that 
he  received  tribute,  which  was  equivalent  to  a  system  of 
taxation ;  and  that  the  proceeds  constituted  a  sort  of  com- 
mon treasury  to  be  drawn  upon  for  public  uses.  One  of 
the  grievances  alleged  by  King  Philip  and  other  sachems 
when,  under  the  influence  of  the  Apostle  Eliot,  many  of  the 
Indians  had  been  gathered  into  villages  of  their  own  that 
they  might  be  instructed  and  trained,  was  that  they  ceased 
to  pay  the  tribute  which  they  had  previously  rendered  to 
their  chiefs.  There  may,  therefore,  have  been  instances, 
more  or  less  defined,  in  which  such  usages  prevailed  among 
the  tribes.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that  they  were  by  no  means 
general,  still  less  indicative  of  a  universal  custom  of  Indian 
government.  There  was'  no  occasion  for  endowing  a  chief, 
or  for  furnishing  him  a  salary.  The  probability  is  that 
there  has  been  more  of  organized  and  of  administrative 
order  in  several  of  the  tribes  since  the  coming  of  the  whites 
than  there  was  before,  and  that  modifications  and  adap- 
tations of  original  Indian  usages,  or  a  recourse  to  some 
wholly  new  ones,  have  necessarily  followed  upon  intimacy 
of  relations  with  the  strangers.  When  the  whites  wished 
to  make  a  treaty  with  a  tribe,  to  obtain  a  grant  of  land,  or 
to  execute  any  other  like  covenant,  they  would  naturally 
call  for  such  persons  among  them  as  had  authority,  ex- 


INDIAN   CHIEFTAINS  AND   ORATORS.  201 

ecutive  and  decisive,  for  acting  for  the  tribe.  These  the 
whites  called  kings,  chieftains,  sachems,  councillors,  while 
the  commonalty  were  called  subjects.  The  facts  certainly 
soon  came  to  conform  to  this  view  of  the  whites ;  but  it  is 
doubtful  whether  such  had  previously  been  the  state  of 
things.  Especially  is  it  doubtful  whether  the  members  of  a 
tribe  considered  themselves  as  subjects  of  their  chief,  in  our 
sense  of  the  word.  Our  term  "  citizens  "  would  more  prop- 
erly apply  to  them.  They  spoke  of  themselves  as  the  people 
of  a  tribe.  We  shall  have  again  to  refer  to  this  point  in 
connection  with  the  matter  of  the  cession  of  lands. 

There  was  a  wide  variety  as  to  headship  and  methods 
of  organization  among  the  scattered  tribes  of  the  aborigines 
on  this  continent.  We  find  frequent  instances  in  which 
headship  was  divided  into  two  distinct  functions,  there 
being  a  chief  for  affairs  of  war  and  another  for  civil  ad- 
ministration, —  a  fighter  and  an  orator.  The  "  powwows," 
priests,  or  medicine-men  had  functions  in  the  government. 
Sometimes  the  hereditary  headship  ran  in  the  male,  some- 
times in  the  female  line,  and  occasionally  it  ran  off  into  col- 
lateral branches.  The  holding  of  a  headship,  if  its  posses- 
sor was  of  marked  ability,  gave  him  a  large  range  to  assert 
authority,  and  assured  to  him  full  liberty  and  acquiescence 
in  its  exercise.  The  ablest  Indians  with  whom  the  whites 
have  had  the  most  serious  relations,  in  peace  or  war,  have 
been  without  exception  chiefs  of  their  tribes.  There  have 
been  but  few  of  these  great  men,  born  sovereigns  and  pa- 
triots, compared  with  the  vastly  larger  number  of  the  ordi- 
nary and  petty  sachems  who  have  held  their  places.  Often, 
too,  the  character  and  qualities  of  the  so-called  subjects 
would  influence  the  functions  and  authority  of  a  chief,  as 
well  as  indicate  what  sort  of  a  man  he  had  need  to  be. 

Under  the  term  "Belts,"  Europeans  name  the  wrought 
and  ornamented  strips  of  skin  or  cloth  in  use  by  the  na- 
tives, made  by  themselves,  and  employed  to  signify  or  ratify 
covenants,  pledges,  and  treaties  in  their  councils  upon  the 


202         THE   INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

more  serious  affairs,  among  their  own  tribes  or  with  the 
whites.  As  first  known  to  the  whites  through  the  Indians 
near  the  coast,  these  "Belts,"  called  "Wampum,"  were 
often  used  as  currency  and  ornaments.  There  they  were 
made  of  little  fragments  of  sea-shells;  in  the  interior,  of 
other  hard  and  glittering  fragments, —  glass,  beads,  etc. 
The  laying  them  down  or  passing  them  from  hand  to  hand 
marks  emphatic  points  in  an  address,  or  impresses  its  close. 
The  intent  is  that  these  belts  shall  be  preserved  and  iden- 
tified with  the  occasion  and  pledge  in  giving  and  receiving 
them.  The  nomadic  and  inconstant  habits  of  the  natives 
do  not  favor  this  preservation.  But  in  some  instances 
they  have  been  cherished  and  handed  down  through  careful 
transmission  in  a  tribe,  and  acquire  sacred  associations. 

The  Indians  over  our  whole  northern  continent,  at  least, 
are  indebted  to  the  Europeans  for  the  addition  to  their  own 
natural  resources  of  what  is  now  the  most  valuable  of  their 
possessions, — a  compensation  for  much  which  they  have 
lost,  and  a  facility  admirably  adapted  to  their  use  in  perfect 
keeping  with  their  own  wild  life.  This  is  the  horse.  What- 
ever support  may  be  assured  for  the  theory  that  the  horse 
was  at  any  time  indigenous  on  either  section  of  this  conti- 
nent, or  whether,  as  has  been  asserted,  its  bones  have  been 
found  among  fossils,  it  is  certain  that  the  present  stock  of 
the  animals  is  from  the  increase  from  foreign  importations, 
—  first  and  chiefly  by  the  Spaniards  through  Florida  and 
California.  How  marvellous  has  been  the  change  which 
time  and  circumstances  have  wrought  since  the  simple  na- 
tives of  our  islands  and  isthmus  quailed  in  panic  dread  and 
'awe  at  the  first  sight  of  those  frightful  monsters,  with  their 
steel-clad  and  death-dealing  riders,  till  now  when  the  useful 
and  almost  intelligent  beast  has  become  the  Indian's  play- 
thing in  sportive  pastime,  and  his  indispensable  resource  in 
the  chase  and  in  his  skirmishes  with  the  white  man !  The 
rifle  and  the  horse  have  spanned  the  chasm  between  the  two 
races  in  most  of  the  occasions  on  which  they  now  confront 


THE  INDIAN  "  PONY."  203 

each  other.  The  "  pony,"  as  the  animal  is  now  affection- 
ately named  by  the  owner,  is  the  chief  object  in  an  Indian's 
inventory  of  his  private  possessions.  It  is  the  standard 
estimate  of  value  for  the  purchase-price  in  marriage  of  the 
daughter  of  a  brave  by  the  young  buck  who  wishes  to  enter 
into  the  bonds  of  wedlock ;  and  the  more  ponies  the  buck 
possesses,  the  more  of  such  helpmeets  can  he  gather  at  the 
same  time  in  his  lodge.  And  when  he  wishes  the  privilege 
of  divorce,  he  can  always  salve  the  wounded  sensibilities 
of  a  father-in-law  by  giving  him  some  of  the  same  sort  of 
currency  which  obtained  for  him  the  bride  who  has  become 
an  incumbrance :  the  father  will  always  take  her  back  if 
she  is  well  mounted  and  has  relays,  —  only  the  animals 
become  his,  not  hers.  The  pride  of  the  Indian  all  over 
our  central  and  western  regions  now  rests  upon  his  ponies 
(their  number  not  infrequently  running  into  the  hundreds) , 
their  training  for  the  chase  of  beasts,  or  men,  and  their 
fleetness  in  flight.  Symmetry  of  form,  grace  of  move- 
ment, quality  of  blood,  are  not  generally  to  any  extent  ob- 
jects of  critical  concern  to  their  owners.  They  are  seldom 
groomed,  though  often  petted ;  they  are  rough  and  shaggy 
in  appearance,  and  untrimmed.  The  breed,  as  modified 
from  progenitors  under  a  different  clime  and  usage  though 
not  wholly  unlike  forms  of  service,  has  adapted  itself  to 
new  conditions  of  food,  exposure,  riders,  and  treatment. 
Wholly  in  contrast  with  the  sleek  and  glossy  Arab  courser, 
the  Indian  pony,  who  never  knows  stable,  and  but  seldom 
shelter,  conforms  himself  patiently  and  as  by  consent  of 
Nature  to  these  changed  terms  of  his  experience.  Coralled 
in  companies  by  night,  or  singly  fettered  or  tied  to  tree  or 
stake,  with  a  range  for  browsing,  according  as  security  or 
apprehension  from  all  furtive  prowlers  might  dictate  to  the 
owner,  the  pony  finds  his  chance  for  resting  and  for  eating 
at  the  same  time.  His  food,  as  well  as  that  of  his  master, 
is  always  contingent,  often  meagre,  and  sometimes  lack- 
ing for  days  together.  On  favored  expanses  of  the  prairie 


204         THE   INDIAN  IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

he  is  at  times  better  fed  than  is  his  rider.  In  his  straits 
he  will  paw  away  the  deep  snows  that  cover  rich  or  scant 
herbage,  or  relieve  his  pangs  by  branches  of  the  cotton- 
wood,  or  other  juiceless  forage.  His  training  was  that 
which  should  adapt  him  to  the  special  requirements  of  his 
master.  No  circus  ring  shows  us  more  facile  or  daring 
equestrians  than  are  common,  indeed  universal,  among  the 
savages.  Their  accomplishments  are  marvellous.  To  over- 
come the  pony's  reluctance  to  draw  into  too  close  proximity 
with  the  wounded  buffalo,  and  when  by  his  front  or  side  to 
help  the  pony  to  avoid  the  short  horns  propelled  by  muscles 
of  gigantic  pressure,  is  a  matter  of  understanding  between 
him  and  his  master.  The  pony  also  easily  acquires  a  con- 
formity of  his  movements  and  attitudes  to  help  the  pur- 
poses of  his  rider  in  throwing  the  lasso.  A  brave  will  cling 
by  one  arm  or  leg  to  the  neck  or  back  of  the  animal,  sus- 
pending his  head  and  body  out  of  reach  by  his  enemy,  and 
catch  his  chance  to  take  aim  and  fire  his  rifle. 

Not  the  least  of  the  acquired  accomplishments  of  the  In- 
dian in  equestrianism  is  that  of  plying  every  artifice  of 
cunning  and  skill,  of  crawling  in  the  covert,  and  watching 
his  chance  for  stealing  the  horses  of  his  neighbor  on  the 
frontiers,  or  of  his  enemy  in  camp.  This  is  one  of  the 
highest  on  the  catalogue  of  the  virtues  of  the  Indian.  Suc- 
cess in  horse-stealing  is  equal  in  merit  to  courage  in  battle. 
The  Indian  in  boasting  his  feats  gives  a  high  place  to  the 
tale  of  his  equestrian  spoils.  If  after  having  made  a  suc- 
cessful raid  for  such  booty  he  is  followed  up  by  the  rifled 
owner,  he  stands  wholly  unabashed  before  the  claimant,  and 
seems  rather  to  expect  a  compliment  than  a  rebuke,  appear- 
ing outraged  at  the  suggestion  of  reprisals.  The  Indians 
have  added  horse-racing,  in  which  they  are  fiery  and  bois- 
terous adepts,  to  their  own  native  games ;  and  they  love  to 
have  white  men  for  spectators.  The  last  resource  of  the 
famishing  Indian,  as  indeed  it  has  been  of  many  parties  of 
hunters  and  explorers  among  the  whites,  buried  in  winter 


THE  PAPPOOSE  AND  THE  YOUTH.  205 

snows  or  on  desert  plains,  is  to  commit  the  pony  to  the 
kettle,  or  to  tear  his  raw  flesh.  In  this  extremity,  how- 
ever, the  beast  like  his  owner  is  but  a  bony  skeleton. 

Nothing  answering  to  our  ideas  of  instruction  or  even  of 
training  was  recognized  among  the  Indians  for  each  genera- 
tion of  the  young.  All  the  teaching  they  received  was  by 
the  approved  method  of  example ;  only  the  example  was  of 
a  sort  merely  to  reproduce  without  advance  or  improvement 
all  the  characteristic  degradation  of  the  same  barbarism 
which  had  been  perpetuated  for  an  unknown  lapse  of  time. 
The  words  home,  school,  pupilage,  discipline,  morality,  de- 
cency, find  no  place  in  any  of  the  multiplied  Indian  vocabu- 
laries. The  catalogue  of  qualities  which  we  call  virtues 
did  not  enter  even  among  the  idealities  of  the  savage. 
With  scarce  an  exception  in  his  favor,  all  who  as  inti- 
mates and  observers  have  best  known  the  Indians  report 
them  as  fraudulent,  insincere,  skilled  in  all  the  arts  of  guile 
and  artifice,  with  habits  filthier  and  more  shameless  than 
those  of  beasts.  Such  being  the  most  marked  traits  of  the 
elders  among  them,  and  in  the  lack  of  any  aim  or  purpose 
to  improve  upon  themselves  in  their  children,  the  utmost 
we  could  expect  of  fathers  is  that  they  would  be  simply 
indifferent  to  their  pappooses,  until,  growing  up  to  ma- 
turity, the  girls  were  about  to  be  salable  as  wives,  and  the 
boys  were  to  put  themselves  into  training  for  warriors.  A 
common  mode  of  paternal  discipline  for  an  offending  youth 
was  to  throw  water  upon  him  by  sprinkling  or  dashing. 
Indians,  however,  are  often  very  fond  of  their  children, 
and  excessively  indulgent  in  the  liberty  allowed  them. 

The  Indian  youth  —  who  had  been  repressed  as  an  in- 
fant, left  alone  for  long  hours  strapped  on  his  birch  or 
bark  cradle  leaning  against  tree  or  wigwam,  and  not  given 
to  crying,  because  he  learned  very  early  that  there  was  no 
use  in  crying  —  was  trusted  as  a  child  to  growth  and  self- 
development.  He  was  inured  to  cold,  hunger,  and  pain ; 
to  rough  dealings  on  the  ground,  in  the  air,  and  in  the 


206         THE  INDIAN   IN   HIS   CONDITION,  RESOURCES,  ETC. 

water.  He  had  been  nursed  by  his  mother  for  three,  four, 
or  even  more  years,  because  of  the  lack  of  other  infantile 
nutriment.  As  soon  as  he  was  free  for  the  use  of  his 
limbs,  for  the  training  of  his  senses,  and  for  the  gaining 
and  exercise  of  physical  strength,  his  prospective  range 
and  method  of  life,  with  the  conditions  under  which  it  was 
to  be  passed,  decided  what  he  was  to  learn  and  practise. 
Upon  the  females,  as  soon  as  they  could  take  their  earliest 
lessons  in  it,  was  impressed  the  consciousness  of  what 
their  full  share  was  to  be  in  what  we  now  call  "  women's 
right  to  labor."  Their  lords  and  masters  never  questioned 
that  right,  or  interfered  with  it,  except  to  see  that  it  was 
fully  exercised  in  doing  all  the  work,  the  easy  and  the  hard 
alike  ;  for  the  male  Indian  would  not  do  a  stroke  of  either. 
The  Indian  women  were  not  prolific ;  their  families  were 
generally  small.  Their  happy  and  indulgent  hours  were 
found  in  their  groupings  together  on  the  grass  or  around 
the  fire,  with  their  work  in  their  hands  and  their  tongues 
busy  and  free.  The  boys  could  gambol,  play  ball  or  other 
games,  and  practise  with  their  bows  and  fish-hooks.  The 
girls  were  equally  free  until  reaching  their  teens,  and  in 
some  tribes  never  came  under  any  discipline  of  withdrawal 
or  restraint  till  they  became  wives.  The  earnest  and  labo- 
rious efforts  which  have  been  made  most  effectively,  in 
quite  recent  years,  for  the  school  education  of  young  In- 
dians, have  profited  by  a  lesson  of  experience.  Trials  were 
made  among  them  of  schools  after  the  usage  of  the  whites, 
the  children  being  gathered  before  their  teachers  at  the 
school  hours,  and  then  left  to  return  to  their  parents' 
lodges.  No  advance  was  made  by  this  method,  either  in 
the  intellectual  training  or  the  elevation  of  the  pupils. 
Recourse  is  now  had  to  boarding-schools,  in  which  the 
children  are  withdrawn  from  all  the  influences  of  their 
wild  life,  and  are  taught  decorum,  cleanliness,  and  self- 
respect,  with  the  alphabet  and  primer.  This  is  one  of  the 
hopeful  methods  of  dealing  with  our  Indian  problem. 


CHAPTER  IY. 

INDIAN  TENUEE  OF  LAND  AS  VIEWED   BY  EUROPEAN  INVADERS 
AND   COLONISTS. 

WE  are  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of  our  sweep  of  territory 
on  this  continent  as  our  "  national  domain."  Its  area, 
excluding  Alaska,  is  estimated  at  a  little  more  than  three 
million  square  miles,  or  1,936,956,160  acres.  We  may 
form  a  comparative  view  of  this  extent  by  reminding  our- 
selves that  the  acreage  of  England  and  Wales  together  is 
37,531,722.  Adding  the  areas  of  Ireland  and  Scotland,  we 
have  an  acreage  for  the  United  Kingdom  of  76,842,965,  or 
less  than  one  twenty-fifth  part  of  the  territory  governed 
by- the  United'  States  on  this  continent.  But  Great  Britain 
on  the  main  and  on  the  American  islands  has  the  control 
of  territory  exceeding  our  own  by  some  sixty-two  million 
acres. 

By  the  last  census  we  have  a  population  rising  fifty  mill- 
ions. Of  these,  about  forty-three  millions  are  whites,  more 
than  six  millions  have  negro  blood,  and  there  are  less  than 
three  hundred  thousand  Indians,  sixty  or  seventy  thousand 
of  whom  are  regarded  as  tamed  and  civilized,  while  a  hun- 
dred thousand  more  are  somewhat  advanced  in  that  pro- 
cess, being  clothed,  according  with  the  ways  of  the  whites, 
with  some  of  our  implements  and  resources.  Less  than 
fifty  thousand  of  the  natives  are  now  regarded  as  violently 
hostile  ;  though  many  more  of  them,  partially  subdued  and 
brought  to  terms,  are  restless,  subject  to  outbreaks,  and 
require  constant  and  watchful  restraint  and  oversight.  All 


208  INDIAN  TENURE   OF  LAND. 

of  the  natives  may  be  said  —  through  pensions,  supplies,  or 
gratuities  —  to  share  in  the  favors  of  our  Government, 
or,  as  one  may  view  the  matter,  in  compensation  for  the 
losses  and  wrongs  suffered  by  them  from  the  whites. 

It  is  computed  that  some  fifteen  hundred  thousand  square 
miles  of  our  territory  are  settled  by  a  thriving  population 
on  homesteads,  pursuing  peacefully  all  the  occupations  of 
industry  and  thrift.  Nearly  fifty  million  acres  have  been 
given  by  the  Government  as  largesses  to  railroads,  for  their 
services  in  advancing  surveys  and  opening  the  country. 
Other  tracts  of  territory  have  been  deeded  for  educational 
and  agricultural  institutions,  and  as  bounties  or  pensions 
to  soldiers.  There  are  estimated  to  be  about  two  billions 
of  acres  of  public  lands,  more  or  less  perfectly  surveyed 
and  explored,  in  possession  of  the  Government. 

Our  Government,  representing  a  people  that  has  well- 
nigh  dispossessed  and  displaced  the  original  occupants  of 
our  present  domain,  is  for  the  present  time  under  covenants, 
with  various  terms  and  conditions,  to  hold  some  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  patches  of  this  territory,  as  reservations, 
for  the  sole  ownership  and  use  of  native  tribes.  About  one 
hundred  and  fifty-six  millions  of  acres,  or  two  hundred  and 
forty-three  thousand  square  miles,  are  thus  covenanted. 

I  have  just  used  the  limitation,  for  the  present  time,  with 
a  reason.  Many  of  those  treaty  covenants  embrace  the 
solemn  phrase  "  for  ever,"  as  extending  the  term  for  which 
they  were  to  be  binding.  But  experience  has  shown  that 
that  phrase  is  practically  inapplicable,  and  has  to  be  quali- 
fied, reduced,  and  taken  as  limitable ;  just  as,  in  the  dis- 
cussions of  theologians  and  scripturists,  the  same  phrase 
applied  to  the  duration  of  future  retributive  punishment 
is  argued  by  many  to  mean  less  than  endlessness  in  the 
lapse  of  time.  An  examination  of  a  digest  of  all  the  treaty 
covenants  made  by  the  Government  with  Indian  tribes 
during  its  century  of  existence,  will  show  very  many  re- 
visions and  annulments  of  them,  from  necessitv,  emer- 


SECURITIES   OF  LAND-TITLES.  209 

gency,  or  the  alleged  stress  of  circumstances.  Sometimes 
these  have  been  made  with  the  full  consent  and  approba- 
tion of  the  tribes  concerned  in  them ;  sometimes  they 
have  been  compelled  to  assent  to  them  against  their  wills, 
more  or  less  compensatory  substitutes  being  made  to  them. 
We  shall  have  soon  to  meet  and  deal  with  the  question, 
whether  the  occasions,  reasons,  and  terms  under  which 
the  Government  entered  into  these  covenants  with  Indian 
tribes,  with  the  intent  or  promise  to  secure  to  them  per- 
petual possession,  committed  it  virtually  and  in  the  court 
of  honor  to  an  acknowledgment  of  the  previous  absolute 
ownership  of  even  the  whole  territory.  In  other  words, 
have  the  Indians  received  their  reservations  as  of  right, 
and  in  confession  of  our  trespass  in  dispossessing  them 
during  all  previous  years,  since  the  first  European  coloniza- 
tion of  the  regions  over  which  they  had  roamed ;  or  has 
the  Government  been  dealing  with  them  in  the  character 
of  chance  interlopers,  having  no  certified  rights,  while  for 
reasons  of  humanity  it  might  well  have  granted  to  them 
indulgences  and  favors  ? 

Having  given  in  the  previous  statistics  the  number  of 
thousands  of  square  miles  of  our  territory  occupied  by  the 
homes  and  fields  of  thrifty  industry,  we  are  tempted,  in 
passing,  to  contrast  the  tenure  by  which  these  possessions 
are  now  held  with  that  —  such  as  we  shall  find  it  to  be  — 
of  the  aboriginal  occupants  of  the  soil  as  they  roamed  over 
it,  or  as  the  dictation  and  authority  of  our  Government 
have  defined  that  tenure  of  the  whole,  or  over  some  of  its 
parts. 

The  homes,  fields,  forests,  mill-streams,  and  mining  tracts 
of  the  whites  holding  our  subdued  territory,  or  even  regions 
still  in  the  depths  of  the  unreclaimed  wilderness,  are  se- 
cured to  them  by  a  system  of  deeds,  carefully  drawn  with 
bounds  and  measurements,  with  indications  of  previous 
ownership,  and  the  terms  of  transfer  and  possession.  These 
deeds,  legally  attested,  are  matters  of  registry  in  a  series 

14 


210  INDIAN   TENURE   OF  LAND. 

of  offices  provided  for  them,  with  other  provisions  for  their 
testamentary  or  non-testamentary  disposal.  Excepting  al- 
ways the  guardianship  of  human  life,  none  of  the  posses- 
sions of  civilized  men  are  more  jealously  watched  over 
and  secured  than  is  real  estate.  The  whole  powers  of  a 
gradation  of  courts  are  engaged  —  even  without  charge  to 
individuals  concerned,  because  having  to  do  with  a  com- 
mon public  interest  —  to  guard  these  landed  rights  of 
ownership.  There  certainly  is  a  fundamental  difference 
between  this  tenure  of  land  as  held  by  civilized  men,  and 
that  of  nomadic  roamers  or  transient  squatters  over  por- 
tions of  wilderness  territory.  Precisely  what  that  differ- 
ence of  tenure  is,  we  are  to  try  to  define.  But  it  is  well 
for  us  to  anticipate  the  inquiry  by  presenting  to  ourselves 
in  full  contrast  the  claims,  usages,  and  acquired  rights 
of  those  who  by  settlement  and  toil  improve  the  surface 
of  the  earth,  and  those  who  only  skim  it. 

Another  preliminary  and  comprehensive  question  now 
presents  itself.  As  in  the  last  resort  we  all  look  to  our 
General  Government  for  protection  and  security  in  our  titles 
to  land,  as  to  other  forms  of  property,  we  assume  that  the 
fee  of  the  whole  territory  vests  in  that  Government.  How 
did  the  Government  acquire  the  right  and  power  to  hold 
this  territory,  parcelled  out  to  individuals,  or  secured  by 
it  in  large  spaces  to  Indians  ?  In  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion— postponing  the  notice  of  what  had  previous  to  our 
Revolutionary  war  transpired  in  the  relations,  peaceful  or 
warlike,  with  the  aboriginal  tribes  — we  have  to  say,  in 
general,  that  our  Government  holds  part  of  the  territory  by 
cession  in  the  treaty  with  Great  Britain  closing  our  national 
struggle.  Portions  of  the  territory  have  been  since  added 
by  purchase  from  the  French  and  Spaniards,  and  by  con- 
quest, annexation,  and  compensation  in  our  relations  with 
Mexico.  But  primarily  our  rights,  such  as  they  are,  accrue 
from  our  victory  over  Great  Britain.  That  power  claimed 
at  least  such  a  portion  of  our  continent  as  at  the  period 


OUR   CONQUEST   FROM   GREAT   BRITAIN.  211 

of  the  war  had  been  explored  and  occupied  by  the  whites, 
by  right  of  discovery  and  possession;  by  victory  over  the 
French,  and  the  cession  through  them  by  treaty  of  all  their 
claims  upon  regions  explored  and  held  by  them ;  and  by 
conquest  of  additional  portions  in  wars  with  the  savages. 
We  acceded  to  whatever  territorial  rights  Great  Britain 
had  acquired,  and  impliedly  to  some  that  it  had  claimed, 
and  would  have  asserted  and  vindicated  had  its  dominance 
continued.  If  Great  Britain  had  cause  of  grievance  in  be- 
ing compelled  to  yield  this  territory,  much  more  (as  we 
shall  see)  had  France  to  complain  of  the  previous  dispos- 
session of  it  by  that  conquering  power.  Only  in  the  later 
period  of  the  colonization  of  the  country,  and  when  the 
times  of  rough  and  hard  beginnings  had  been  passed  and 
rewarding  success  achieved,  did  Great  Britain  in  its  patron- 
izing or  protecting  functions  of  government  concern  itself 
with  its  nominal  subjects  on  this  continent ;  and  then  it 
came  in  not  so  much  for  their  benefit  as  from  jealousy  and 
hostility  to  France.  France,  on  the  other  hand,  had  from 
the  first  Teachings  forth  of  its  enterprise  and  its  costly 
outlays  over  our  seas  and  bays,  our  lakes  and  rivers,  and 
the  capacities  of '  trade  and  commerce  here,  engaged  the 
power  and  patronage  of  its  monarchs  and  prime  ministers, 
its  nobles  and  its  armies,  to  secure  and  improve  an  inheri- 
tance on  this  broad  continent.  But  when  it  yielded  to 
British  arms  in  a  conflict  substantially  lasting  through  a 
century  and  a  half,  our  Government  succeeded  to  such 
benefits  and  to  such  controversies  and  quarrels  of  the  tem- 
porary dominion  as  were  left  here  below  our  present  boun- 
dary-line. If  Francis  of  France,  for  the  benefit  of  his 
royal  successors,  had  been  provided  for,  as  he  thought  he 
should  have  been,  by  a  clause  in  Adam's  will  disposing 
of  this  continent,  those  successors  would  have  been  in  no 
wise  benefited  by  it. 

Whatever  compunctions  may  be  felt  by  any  among  us 
as  to  our  method  of  dispossessing  our  aborigines,  none  such 


212  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

are  entertained  about  any  advantage  or  property  obtained 
in  our  victory  over  Great  Britain.  We  rest  without  a 
single  throb  of  conscience  in  the  fullest  enjoyment  of  them. 
Indeed,  we  are  ready  to  put  the  most  indulgent  construc- 
tion upon,  and  to  strain  to  the  fullest  vindication  which 
candor  and  justice  will  allow,  the  sort  and  right  of  tenure 
which  Great  Britain  had  enjoyed  to  the  territory  which  we 
conquered  from  her.  Our  Government  is  not  responsible 
for  trespass  against  the  natural  rights  of  the  aborigines 
which  Britain  committed  in  following  what  it  would  call  a 
law  of  Nature,  after  discovery.  A  striking  illustration  is 
found  of  the  views  of  our  Government  on  this  matter  in 
the  course  pursued  by  General  St.  Clair,  when  he  went, 
in  1788,  as  governor  of  the  Northwest  Territory,  to  Fort 
Harmar, —  Marietta, — at  the  confluence  of  the  Muskingum 
and  the  Ohio,  to  enter  into  treaties  with  savages  north 
and  west  of  the  latter  river.  When  the  savages  com- 
plained that  the  whites  were  not  willing  to  regard  the 
river  as  a  boundary,  St.  Clair  flatly  told  them,  that,  as 
they  had  been  allies  of  our  British  enemies  in  the  war, 
they  must  meet  as  the  consequence  of  defeat  the  loss  of 
their  lands. 

It  is  time  for  us  now  to  turn  to  the  aboriginal  tribes, 
to  inquire  what  had  been  and  were  their  territorial  rights 
before  and  while  they  were  being  ground  in  the  mill  by 
rival  European  nationalities,  all  intruders. 

What  were  the  right  and  tenure  by  which  the  red  men, 
on  the  first  coming  of  Europeans  as  colonists  to  this  con- 
tinent, are  to  be  understood  as  holding  the  soil,  either  in 
localities  by  their  several  tribes,  or  as  a  race  in  possession 
of  the  whole  territory  ?  Of  course  we  put  out  of  sight  all 
those  terms — instruments,  covenants,  and  constitutions  — 
in  USQ  among  nations,  states,  and  municipalities  under  civil- 
ization, to  define  their  bounds  and  mark  their  jurisdiction. 
No  state-paper  offices,  no  registries  of  deeds,  no  treaty  sanc- 
tions even,  have  place  in  this  question ;  and  only  such  ele- 


INDIAN  POSSESSION  BY   CONQUEST.  213 

ments  of  the  common  law  as  pertain  to  the  simple  rights 
of  humanity  can  come  into  the  argument. 

It  has  been  assumed  that  on  the  first  occasion  of  contact 
between  the  red  man  and  the  white  man  on  each  portion  of 
this  continent,  as  successively  entered  upon  by  colonists, 
the  Indians  then  and  there  in  occupancy — after  their  mode 
of  use  —  had  the  full  right  of  ownership,  as  if  indigenous 
or  lawful  inheritors.  Following  the  localities  on  the  sea- 
board and  the  interior  then  occupied  by  tribes  of  the  sav- 
ages, we  might  be  tempted  to  identify  them  with  such  spots, 
and,  assigning  each  tract  to  each  party,  might  infer  a  long 
and  secure  occupancy,  known  and  certified,  so  as  to  cover  a 
complete  title.  But  such  a  conclusion  on  our  part  would 
be  wide  of  the  mark. 

The  right  of  any  one  tribe — or,  as  often  loosely  named, 
any  one  nation  —  of  the  savages  to  any  particular  region 
of  territory  here  over  which  they  roamed,  or  where  they 
planted  their  cabins  or  cultivated  their  maize,  was  simply 
the  right  of  present  occupancy  and  possession.  We  can 
hardly,  in  any  case  known  to  us,  say  that  it  was  a  right  of 
inheritance  even,  much  less  of  continuity  through  genera- 
tions of  this  or  that  same  stock  identified  with  a  particular 
locality.  We  draw  upon  our  fancies  somewhat,  if  not 
in  excess,  when  we  speak  of  the  ancestral  forests,  lakes, 
streams,  and  mountains  passing  by  inheritance  through 
the  generations  of  a  tribe.  They  were  an  Ishmaelitish 
race.  The  fact  of  possession  was  more  often  found  through 
conquest  than  through  inheritance.  We  have  positive  his- 
torical knowledge,  in  a  large  number  and  in  a  wide  variety 
of  cases,  of  the  transient  occupancy  of  one  or  another  re- 
gion by  those  whom  the  white  men  found  upon  it.  The 
aborigines  were  in  a  chronic  state  of  civil  war.  The  war- 
path for  them  alternated  with  the  hunting-path,  though 
both  paths  often  were  on  the  same  route.  Their  wars  were 
for  conquest,  for  revenge,  for  self-defence,  and  not  infre- 
quently ended  only  in  the  extermination  of  one  party, 


214  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

the  sparse  remnant  left  being  adopted  into  the  tribe  of  the 
conquerors.  Such  had  been  the  state  of  things  before  the 
coming  of  the  whites,  and  it  has  so  continued  to  our  own 
times. 

It  was  not  till  more  than  a  century  after  the  whites  had 
formed  permanent  settlements  on  the  Atlantic  and  the  Ca- 
nadian borders  of  this  continent  that  they  knew  anything 
positively  about  the  extent  and  manner  of  its  occupancy 
by  native  tribes  in  the  interior.  The  natural  inference,  in 
the  absence  of  knowledge,  was  that  the  interior  was  occu- 
pied very  much  as  were  the  borders,  —  by  the  same  sort  of 
sparse  and  roaming  tribes,  each  claiming  the  spaces  and 
regions  over  which  they  hunted,  or  where  they  reared  their 
lodges  and  planted  their  maize ;  so  that  in  effect  the  rights 
of  savagery,  such  as  they  were,  covered  substantially  our 
whole  present  domain.  This  inference,  too,  was  a  part  of 
the  assumption  that  there  were  many  millions  of  natives 
spread  over  the  continent.  Actual  exploration,  positive 
knowledge,  and  better-grounded  inferences  have  greatly 
modified  the  views  assumed  when  these  vast  realms  were 
all  shadowed  by  the  mystery  of  the  unknown.  Those  sup- 
posed millions  in  our  native  forests  have  been  reduced  by 
well-informed  inquirers  to  only  three,  and  again  to  only  one 
million,  and  even  to  a  much  diminished  estimate.  The 
better  we  have  become  informed  about  the  numbers  and 
the  conditions  of  life  of  existing  savage  tribes,  the  more 
unreasonable  seems  to  us  a  large  estimate  of  the  numbers 
of  their  predecessors. 

The  fancy  that  our  vast  interior  spaces,  with  their  lakes 
and  river-courses,  their  valleys,  plains,  and  meadows,  were 
all  parcelled  out  and  occupied,  after  their  fashion,  by  our 
native  tribes,  has  yielded  to  assured  facts  of  proved  incon- 
sistency with  it.  Tribes  vanquished  near  the  seaboard 
and  011  our  lake-shores  were  always  able  to  find  a  refuge 
in  unoccupied  territory.  The  whole  of  Kentucky,  when 
the  white  pioneers  explored  it,  was  teuantless,  unclaimed, 


THE    CONTINENT   THINLY   POPULATED.  215 

crossed  only  as  it  might  have  been  by  war-parties  on  their 
raids   beyond   its   bounds.      Enormous   reaches   of   Upper 
Canada,  and  large  parts  of  the  present  States  bordering 
on  the  south  of  the  great  lakes,  had  no  human  tenants ; 
one  might  roam  in  them  for  weeks  and  find  no  trace  of 
man.    It  has  been  intelligently  affirmed  that  just  before  our 
Revolutionary  War  the  number  of  Indian  warriors  between 
the  ocean  and  the  Mississippi,  and  between  Lake  Superior 
and  the  Ohio,  did  not  exceed  ten  thousand.     If  the  theories 
drawn  from  the  examination  of  the  Western  earth-mounds 
have  good  reasons  to  support  them,  an  unmeasured  length 
of  time  had  passed  since  their  disuse  and  desertion.     How- 
ever populous  the  regions  around  them  may  once  have  been, 
they  had  long  been  lonely  and  tenantless.     These  theories, 
in  connection  with  others  of  the  archaeologists,  trace  suc- 
cessive conquests  from  north  to  south  and  from  south  to 
north,  sweeping  over  these  midland  territories,  causing  them 
at  last  to  be  turned  to  solitudes.     Epidemic  diseases  also 
may  have  ravaged  over  those  long  reaches  of  the  interior, 
and  nearly  or  entirely  depopulated  them.    Never  in  a  single 
case  within  the  last  century,  when  white  men  have  first  come 
to  the  knowledge  of  remote  tribes,  have  they  been  found 
to  be  very  numerous.      As   successively   the  tribes   have 
moved  back  from  our  frontiers  into  farther  spaces,  they 
have,  till  quite  recent  years,  always  found  sufficient  wild 
territory  for  their  own  habits,  where  they  could  go  undis- 
turbed ;  or,  if  meeting  with  any  already  roaming  there,  found 
them  to  be  so  few  that  there  was  no  crowding.     The  tradi- 
tions of  many  tribes  also  preserve  relations  of  voluntary 
migrations   made   by   them,   independently   of   any  catas- 
trophes of  war,  and  merely  for  bettering  their  condition. 
The  abundance  of  the  game  in  former  centuries,  when  com- 
pared with  its  rapidly  increasing  scarcity  in  recent  years, 
would  indicate  that  it  was  not  of  old  drawn  upon  for  any 
vast  number  of  consumers.     In  the  lack,  therefore,  of  the 
more  positive  knowledge  which  is  out  of  our  reach,  there 


216  INDIAN   TENURE   OF  LAND. 

are  reasonable  grounds  for  the  belief,  that,  when  the 
Europeans  arrived,  there  were  no  vast  multitudes  of  na- 
tives here,  and  that  they  could  not  have  appropriated  the 
whole  continent. 

The  statement  may  be  strongly  emphasized,  that,  from 
the  first  entrance  of  the  white  man  on  this  continent,  the 
condition  in  which  the  natives  were  found,  and  the  rela- 
tions in  which  they  stood  to  each  other  furnished  every 
facility  for  their  conquest  and  dispossession  of  the  soil,  and 
indeed  even  solicited  and  tempted  the  new  comers  to  as- 
sume over  them  the  tyranny  of  superiors.  In  discussing 
under  the  broadest  terms  the  responsibility  of  the  Euro- 
peans, coming  hither  either  as  conquerors  or  as  peaceful 
settlers,  for  their  treatment  of  the  red  men,  the  statement 
just  made  opens  many  important  suggestions  which  are  to 
be  candidly  considered.  It  may  be  affirmed  in  very  posi- 
tive terms,  that  if  the  natives  had  been  in  a  state  of  peace, 
of  union  and  harmony  among  themselves,  and  had  with 
one  purpose  fronted  the  early  European  adventurers,  giving 
them  110  aid  and  comfort,  and  resisting  their  first  feeble, 
forlorn,  and  impoverished  encroachments,  both  conquest 
and  colonization  on  this  soil  would  have  been  long  de- 
ferred, and  when  finally  accomplished  would  have  been  ac- 
companied by  very  different  circumstances,  conditions,  and 
results.  Europeans,  conquerors  and  colonists,  of  each  na- 
tionality,—  Spanish,  French,  Dutch,  and  English, — found 
their  opportunity  and  their  facility  in  the  intestine  strifes 
and  the  savage  hostilities  of  the  natives.  The  new  comers 
in  every  case  were  able  to  find,  and  at  once  availed  them- 
selves of,  Indian  alliances  against  Indians.  Cortes  in 
Mexico  and  Pizarro  in  Peru  would  inevitably  have  been 
cut  off,  starved,  and  disabled  in  their  schemes  but  for  the 
fortuity  of  circumstances  which  gave  them  strong  native 
alliances  with  rival  chieftains,  with  rebels,  or  with  the 
whole  or  portions  of  tribes  smarting  under  the  wild  or 
tyrannical  sway  of  their  native  despots.  To  each  single 


EXTERMINATING  INDIAN   HOSTILITIES.  217 

Spaniard  in  the  sparse  ranks  of  each  crew  of  the  invaders, 
one  or  even  many  hundred  of  the  Indians  were  to  be 
found  acting  as  guides,  purveyors,  or  actual  and  vigor- 
ous combatants.  The  rival  caciques  of  Peru,  as  well  as 
Montezuma  and  his  heirs,  found  that  the  intruding  white 
man  was  constituting  himself  an  umpire  in  their  intestine 
quarrels.  When  the  French  were  seeking  their  first  foot- 
hold in  Canada  they  happened  to  fall  among  the  Hurons, 
who  were  ready  to  be  their  friends  against  hostile  neighbors 
across  the  lakes  who  had  already  humbled  them.  In  the 
early  abortive  attempts  of  French  colonization  in  Florida, — 
those  of  the  Huguenots  under  Ribault  and  Laudonniere,  in 
1562  and  1564, — it  proved  that  there  were  several  rival 
confederacies  of  native  tribes  on  that  peninsula.  They  had 
been  at  bitter  feud,  and  engaged  in  deadly  strife  with  each 
other  for  a  hold  on  the  soil,  previous  to  the  arrival  of  the 
French.  With  three  of  these  warring  and  jealous  bands 
the  commanders  came  into  intercourse.  At  a  critical  stage 
in  his  enterprise  Ribault  saved  his  company  from  the  threat- 
ening violence  of  the  tribe  on  whose  soil  he  was  about  erect- 
ing a  fort,  by  agreeing  upon  an  alliance  with  its  chief  in  his 
projected  raid  upon  his  nearest  enemy.  The  commander 
entered  upon  the  covenant,  but  was  perfidious  to  it,  and 
made  friends  with  the  other  tribes  so  far  as  to  serve  his 
own  temporary  ends.  The  first  French  missionaries  in 
Acadia  found  the  Souriquois,  or  Micmaks,  in  fierce  war- 
fare with  the  Esquimaux,  paddling  by  sea  thirty  or  forty 
miles  to  attack  them.  The  rapidity  with  which  the  pro- 
cess, well-nigh  exterminating,  of  Indians  against  Indians, 
went  on  may  be  inferred  from  a  statement  made  by  the 
heroic  Father  Brebeuf.  While  he  was  living  among  the 
Hurons,  he  estimated  their  numbers,  perhaps  excessively, 
at  thirty  thousand,  distributed  in  twenty  villages,  besides 
a  dozen  numerous  sedentary  tribes  speaking  their  lan- 
guage. All  these  had  been  well-nigh  exterminated  at  the 
close  of  the  seventeenth  century  by  the  fiercer  Iroquois, 


218  INDIAN  TENUKE   OP  LAND. 

the  remnant  being  barely  sufficient  to  compose  a  small 
mission  at  Lorette. 

The  pacific  policy  of  William  Penn,  in  his  fair  purchase 
of  land  and  his  honest  covenant  with  the  Indians,  stands 
accredited  in  our  popular  histories  and  traditions  with  all 
the  distinctive  qualities  of  justice  and  humanity  which  can 
fairly  be  claimed  for  it.  Perhaps  a  keen  scrutiny,  insti- 
tuted by  severer  tests,  of  historical  authorities  might  reduce 
the  special  and  exceptional  dignity  and  rectitude  of  the 
Quaker  purchase.  But  it  is  to  the  point  to  recognize  the 
very  important  fact,  that  the  Delaware  Indians,  with  whom 
Penn  made  his  treaty,  were  then  a  vanquished  and  humbled 
remnant  of  several  tribes,  which  had  previously  been  under 
the  harrows  of  the  ferocious  Iroquois  of  New  York.  The 
conquerors  of  the  Delawares  exacted  tribute  from  them,  and 
stigmatized  them  as  women.  Under  these  circumstances  the 
white  man's  friendship  was  worth  its  easy  cost.  Neverthe- 
less, the  exceptionally  pacific  spirit  and  equitable  dealing 
which  characterized  the  first  relations  of  Penn's  proprie- 
tary government  did  not  secure  his  colonists  under  the 
administration  of  his  grandson,  Governor  John  Penn,  from 
a  full  share  in  the  hostilities  of  the  Indians  in  the  French 
and  English  wars  preceding  and  following  the  Revolu- 
tion. In  their  dire  emergency  the  Quakers  were  obliged  to 
abandon  their  peace  policy. 

In  connection  with  the  aggression  of  the  whites,  it  is  natu- 
ral to  lay  stress  on  the  fact  that  there  were  repeated  instan- 
ces in  the  case  of  the  earliest  colonists  from  each  of  the 
European  nationalities,  when  the  foreign  adventurers,  rovers, 
'and  settlers  were  so  weak  and  helpless,  so  reduced  to  absolute 
starvation,  that  had  it  not  been  for  the  pity  and  aid  of  the 
natives,  as  well  as  for  the  fact  of  their  being  at  bitter  feud 
among  themselves,  there  would  not  have  been  a  survivor 
left  of  them.  Had  the  natives,  with  or  without  concert,  and 
with  a  prescience  of  what  was  to  be  their  fate  from  the  in- 
truders, availed  themselves  of  their  opportunity,  the  miser- 


METHODS  OF  THE  SEVERAL   COLONISTS.  219 

able  plight  of  the  white  men  would  have  made  their  ruin 
easy.  But  in  most  of  these  cases  of  the  extremity  of  the 
whites  they  owed  their  safety  and  relief  as  much  to  the 
animosities  of  warring  tribes  as  to  the  pity  and  kindness 
of  the  red  men.  Though  the  Spaniards  by  their  atrocities 
had  roused  against  themselves  the  dread  and  fiercest  hate 
of  their  wretched  victims,  they  were  several  times  gene- 
rously and  piteously  fed  by  them  when  they  had  neither 
money  to  purchase  nor  arms  to  wrest  supplies.  When  the 
arrogant  company  of  French  Protestants  under  Ribault,  in 
1562,  in  the  St.  John  River  in  Florida,  had  been  reduced  to 
starvation  by  their  idleness  and  recklessness,  the  Indians, 
who  despised  their  frivolity  as  much  as  they  hated  the 
haughty  ferocity  of  the  Spaniards,  came  to  their  relief.  A 
friendly  chief  built  and  filled  for  them  a  store-house  of 
supplies  in  their  fort,  and  when  on  the  night  following  a 
fire  destroyed  it  with  all  its  contents,  rebuilt  and  filled  it 
again.  And  when  the  desperate  Frenchmen  resolved  to 
seek  their  way  back  to  France,  the  savages  helped  them  to 
build  and  rig  a  vessel.  But  instead  of  manifesting  simple 
gratitude  under  such  circumstances,  the  invaders  were  al- 
ways on  the  watch  to  foment  discords  among  the  natives, 
that  they  might  profit  by  engaging,  if  possible,  a  stronger 
tribe,  or  the  stronger  faction  of  a  tribe,  on  their  side. 

There  was  a  very  broad  distinction  in  the  course  pursued 
by  the  permanent  English  colonists,  when  their  turn  came, 
from  that  which  was  taken  up  by  the  Spaniards  and  the 
French  in  the  earlier  periods,  as  to  any  bargains  or  treaties 
about  land  with  the  natives.  I  cannot  call  to  mind  a  single 
instance  in  which  the  Spaniards,  recognizing  any  sort  of 
vested  right  to  territory  occupied  by  the  Indians,  were  at 
the  pains  even  to  ask  leave  of  them  for  residence,  much 
less  to  obtain  a  release  of  claims  and  a  transfer  of  any 
space  for  their  own  lawful  possession.  The  only  exception 
to  the  sweep  of  this  statement  is  in  the  case  in  which 
Columbus,  after  the  loss  of  one  of  his  vessels  in  his  first 


220  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

voyage  here,  obtained  the  consent  of  a  cacique  for  con- 
structing his  fort  at  La  Navidad  for  the  party  left  by  him 
as  a  colony.  The  Spaniards  always  acted  complacently  on 
their  own  church  theory,  that,  as  heathen  territory  belonged 
to  Christians,  no  title-deeds  were  necessary  to  transfer  its 
ownership. 

The  French,  according  to  the  purpose  and  method  of 
their  errand  and  occupancy  here,  seem  never  to  have 
thought  of  the  propriety  of  asking  leave  or  of  acquiring  a 
title  from  the  natives.  In  their  steady  progress  of  explora- 
tion and  establishing  trading-stations  and  missions  along 
the  Northern  lakes  and  by  the  courses  of  the  Western  rivers, 
they  assumed  that  the  natives  and  themselves  were  to  share 
in  mutual  advantages,  and  might  take  for  granted  that  the 
new  comers  would  be  welcome.  They  were  not  bent  upon 
establishing  cleared  farms  and  townships,  like  the  English. 
They  never  objected,  as  did  the  English,  to  the  unrestrained 
presence  of  the  natives  circulating  among  them,  and  keep- 
ing up  a  free  intercourse.  It  seems  never  to  have  occurred 
to  them  to  ask  for  the  transfer  to  them,  by  covenants,  of 
bounded  tracts  of  land.  The  French  took  up  their  first 
permanent  residence  in  the  territory  of  the  Algonquins  and 
Hurons,  making  themselves  agreeable  to  the  natives  at  first 
by  profitable  trade,  and  soon  afterwards  necessary  as  allies 
against  their  ruthless  enemies  the  Iroquois.  These  Iro- 
quois,  who  were  in  amicable  relations  with  the  Dutch,  were 
deadly  enemies  of  the  French,  because  the  latter  were  in 
alliance  with  the  Hurons.  The  powerful  Iroquois  were 
themselves  invaders,  and  held  by  conquest  the  splendid 
region  at  the  centre  and  the  west  of  New  York.  They 
drove  out  the  previous  occupants.  The  strife  between 
them  and  the  Adirondacks  of  Canada  continued  more 
than  half  a  century  after  the  early  voyages  of  the  French 
in  1535. 

We  may  make  the  largest  allowance  for  the  fact  that  the 
whites,  in  many  places  all  over  the  country  and  in  all  the 


INDIANS  DISPOSSESSING  INDIANS.  221 

years  that  have  passed,  have  justified  their  dispossession  of 
successive  tribes  by  the  plea  that  they  were  only  spoiling 
spoilers.  The  Muscogees  from  the  Ohio  moved  down  into 
Alabama  after  it  had  been  desolated  by  De  Soto,  and  pur- 
sued their  conquests  over  many  enfeebled  tribes.  In  1822, 
in  a  talk  with  the  missionary  Compere,  Big  Warrior,  the 
chief  of  the  Creek  Confederacy,  boasted  of  their  prowess 
in  conquering,  driving  out,  and  destroying  the  tribes  in 
possession  before  them.  But  the  missionary  silenced  the 
boaster  with  this  question  :  "  If  this  is  the  way  your  ances- 
tors acquired  all  the  territory  of  Georgia,  how  can  you 
blame  the  Americans  now  in  the  State  for  trying  to  take 
it  from  you  ?" 

Just  previous  to  the  arrival  of  the  Plymouth  and  Bay 
colonists  in  Massachusetts  a  fatal  plague  had  devastated 
the  local  tribes.  Massasoit,  the  sachem  of  the  once  power- 
ful Wampanoags  wasted  by  this  scourge,  had  in  conse- 
quence become  tributary  to  the  Narragansetts  ;  and  he  was 
glad  to  lighten  the  yoke  by  entering  into  a  solemn  treaty 
with  the  Pilgrims.  This  first  treaty  of  white  and  red  men 
lasted  also  longer  than  any  one  ever  made  between  the 
parties,  —  unbroken  for  fifty  years.  The  Pilgrims  thus 
found  protection,  in  their  first  extreme  feebleness,  in  allies 
jealous  of  a  superior  native  tribe.  And  when  Philip  began 
to  organize  his  league  he  became  tributary  to  Plymouth. 
In  their  exterminating  war  against  the  Pequots  the  English 
had  the  Narragansetts  as  allies.  The  Mohicans,  who  had 
occupied  the  upper  Hudson,  had  been  driven  from  it  by  the 
Mohawks  in  1628,  and,  settling  again  on  the  Connecticut, 
had  been  made  tributary  to  the  Pequots,  —  thus  being 
ready  for  an  alliance  with  the  English. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  Europeans  of  every  nation- 
ality, even  when  not  fomenting  discord,  were  all  too  ready 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  rivalries,  the  hostilities,  and  the 
internecine  struggles  of  the  native  tribes,  and  to  turn  them 
to  their  own  account.  Doubtless,  too,  the  Europeans  pri- 


222  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

marily  opened  some  of  these  quarrels,  raising  jealousies  and 
trying  to  persuade  the  Indians  that  the  new  comers  would 
be  better  friends  and  more  useful  to  them  than  they  could 
be  to  each  other.  When  in  Philip's  war  the  noble  Canon- 
chet,  a  sachem  of  the  Narragansetts  and  Philip's  chief 
captain,  was  taken  prisoner,  he  was  offered  his  life  on  condi- 
tion of  the  submission  of  his  tribe.  Refusing  the  condition 
he  was  sentenced  to  be  shot.  The  English  sought  to  in- 
sure the  future  fidelity  of  their  allied  tribes  against  any 
vengeful  feeling  for  his  execution  by  making  them,  after  a 
sort,  parties  to  it.  So  the  subjugated  Pequots  were  made 
to  shoot  him ;  the  Mohicans  to  cut  off  his  head  and  quarter 
him ;  the  Niantics  to  burn  his  body ;  and  then  his  head  was 
sent  to  the  English  commissioners  at  Hartford  as  "  a  token 
of  love."  And  when  the  time  for  it  came,  the  Indians  were 
always  ready  to  make  alliances  with  rival  and  warring  colo- 
nists, to  the  sacrifice  of  their  own  common  interests.  Even 
on  the  Island  of  Nantucket,  on  the  first  coming  of  the 
whites,  there  were  two  Indian  tribes  at  feud ;  and  Philip 
claimed  tribute  there. 

Yet  had  it  been  the  fact  that  each  and  every  tribe  of 
Indians  found  in  occupancy  here  had  secured  its  tract  of 
territory  by  conquest  from  some  other  tribe,  at  any  pre- 
vious interval  of  time  near  or  remote,  and  that  the  Euro- 
peans were  aware  of  it,  this  fact  alone  could  not  in  the  view 
of  the  latter  have  proved  that  the  possessors  had  no  right- 
ful tenure  on  sucli  soil.  Rights  obtained  by  conquest  were 
recognized  in  what  we  call  the  code  of  natural  law.  The 
ancestors  of  all  the  Europeans  who  dispossessed  our  aborig- 
ines had,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  acceded  to  the  lands 
held  by  them  in  the  same  way  of  conquest.  Never  in  any 
case  have  the  whites  on  this  continent  undertaken  to  drive 
off  any  tribe  in  transient  occupancy  of  a  particular  region 
for  the  purpose  of  restoring  it  to  those  who  formerly  held  it. 
It  has  been  always  for  their  own  possession  and  use  that 
Europeans  have  induced  or  compelled  the  natives  to  yield 


LAND   RIGHTS   OF   NOMADS.  223 

their  successive  resting  places,  and  to  move  on.  So  that 
though  the  whites  have  on  all  occasions  made  the  most  of 
the  plea  that  they  only  spoiled  spoilers,  it  is  plain  that  this 
alone  would  not  have  been  relied  upon  as  justifying  them 
in  disputing  the  sufficiency  of  the  aboriginal  tenure  of  ter- 
ritory. Looking  beyond  this,  therefore,  we  find  that  there 
were  two  other  grounds  of  defence  and  of  privilege  as- 
sumed by  the  Europeans :  first,  some  shape  of  the  assump- 
tion that  the  heathenism  of  the  Indians  impaired  their 
natural  rights ;  and  second,  that  they  made  no  such  use  and 
improvement  of  the  soil  as  to  secure  a  title  to  it. 

The  tenure  of  land  among  the  ancient  and  some  modern 
migratory  hordes  of  the  Eastern  World  was  similarly  loose 
and  undefined  with  that  of  our  aborigines.  When  the 
Israelites  wished  to  justify  their  conquest  of  Canaan,  they 
said  that  they  were  only  reclaiming  an  old  ancestral  pos- 
session, of  which  in  the  absence  of  written  title-deeds  there 
were  three  expressive  tokens,  —  the  altar  on  the  hill  of 
Bethel,  the  well  of  Jacob,  and  the  family  sepulchre  in  the 
field  of  Machpelah. 

It  would  be  irrelevant  to  quote  here,  and  to  institute  an 
application  of,  the  principles  advanced  in  the  treatises  of 
Maine  and  other  recent  publicists  on  the  conditions  regulat- 
ing, or  rather  allowing,  the  occupancy  and  use  of  wild  land 
by  wild  men,  as  they  simply  follow  the  law  of  Nature,  per- 
sonal liberty,  and  impulses  of  their  own,  in  roaming  or 
resting  here  or  there.  The  principles  of  natural  law  may 
suggest  ijie  theories  which  are  to  be  drawn  from  or  applied 
to  the  kind  of  tenure  to  territory  thus  claimed  or  held. 
But  the  theories,  after  all,  have  to  be  constructed  from  the 
facts  in  any  instance  of  large  application.  In  the  case  of 
our  own  aborigines  we  have  as  signal  and  significant  a  one 
as  could  be  proposed  for  a  precedent.  All  the  conditions 
which  could  ever  present  themselves  together  for  raising 
all  the  terms  of  the  question  as  to  the  natural  and  acquired 
rights  of  barbarians  found  in  temporary  occupancy  of  wild 


INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

territory,  were  necessarily  met  here  ;  and  the  way  in  which 
the  whites  viewed  claims  founded  on  those  assumed  rights, 
presents  the  other  side  of  the  problem.  As  we  have  already 
seen,  some  of  the  Europeans — the  Spaniards  —  utterly  de- 
spised such  rights,  never  giving  the  least  heed  or  deference 
to  them;  others  of  the  Europeans — the  French — did  not 
find  it  necessary  for  their  purposes  to  bring  them  under 
controversy  or  discussion.  Either  of  these  two  courses 
might  be  pronounced  as  consistent  as  they  were  conven- 
ient, in  averting  all  complications  of  argument  or  arbitra- 
tion. But  the  English  colonists,  as  we  shall  see,  did  not 
follow  the  example  either  of  the  Spaniards  or  the  French. 
They  adopted  views  and  pursued  courses  distinctively  their 
own  as  to  the  recognition  of  and  dealing  with  the  assumed 
rights  of  the  savages  on  this  wild  territory.  Their  way  of 
dealing  with  the  matter,  if  not  their  opinions  about  it,  was 
not  consistent,  but  vacillating  and  variable,  adjusting  itself 
to  circumstances.  And  this  inconsistent  course,  adopted 
from  the  first  by  the  English,  has  run  down  through  our 
whole  history,  and  is  really  at  the  root  of  the  worst  per- 
plexities and  embarrassments  entailed  upon  our  Govern- 
ment in  its  dealings  with  the  Indians.  The  inconsistency 
was  in  admitting  certain  natural  rights  of  the  natives 
without  defining  them,  and  then  trifling  with  them  by  a 
vacillating  policy. 

The  claim  of  the  disciples  of  the  Roman  Church  was,  as 
we  have  seen,  absolute  in  this  matter  ;  and,  practically,  the 
course  pursued  by  the  Protestants  —  though  they  would 
have  pleaded  that  they  were  driven  to  it  by  stress  of  cir- 
cumstances in  their  self-defence  —  at  first  proceeded  upon 
the  assumption  of  the  same  claim,  though  it  was  soon 
modified.  When  Francis  I.  of  France  had  reminded  him- 
self that,  if  Adam  had  made  a  will,  a  portion  of  the  New 
World  which  the  Pope  had  given  over  in  a  lump  to  the 
monarchs  of  Spain  and  Portugal  would  have  fallen  to  him, 
he  determined  to  act  on  the  reasonable  supposition  and  to 


ROYAL   DONATIONS   OF   TERRITORY.  225 

claim  his  share  in  the  spoils  of  the  heathen,  and  sent  Verra- 
zano,  in  1524,  to  pick  up  the  leavings.  Verrazano  made 
three  voyages,  and  planted  the  arms  of  France  from  the 
Mississippi  to  the  St.  Lawrence.  Though  the  bull  of  Pope 
Paul  III.  had  pronounced  the  natives  here  to  be  real  men, 
not  monkeys,  —  "  utpote  veros  homines"  —  Francis,  in  his 
Commission,  declared  them  to  be  "  savages  living  without 
the  knowledge  of  God  and  without  the  use  of  reason." 
His  successor,  Henry  IV.,  wrote :  "  We  have  undertaken, 
with  the  help  of  God, — the  Author,  Distributor,  and  Pro- 
tector of  all  kingdoms  and  states,  —  to  guide,  instruct,  and 
convert  to  Christianity  and  the  belief  of  our  holy  faith  the 
inhabitants  of  that  country,  who  are  barbarians,  atheists, 
devoid  of  religion,"  etc.  So  the  Marquis  De  la  Roche  was 
appointed  viceroy  here  in  1598  ;  but  he  brought  over  for 
this  work  of  conversion  only  fifty  felons  from  the  prisons, 
and  no  clergymen. 

A  similar  commission  was  given  in  1601  to  M.  Chau- 
vin,  who  was  ordered  to  spread  the  Catholic  faith  over 
North  America.  But  he  was  a  Calvinist.  He  collected 
peltry,  in  which  he  did  a  profitable  business,  and  left  the 
missionary  work  unattempted.  In  all  the  subsequent  en- 
terprises of  the  French  for  colonization  and  empire  here, 
according  to  the  patronage  under  which  each  of  them  was 
pursued,  there  was  an  alternation  of  preponderance  given 
to  secular  or  sacred  objects  to  be  advanced.  As  in  all 
worldly  interests,  according  to  the  Scripture  text  never 
challenged,  "  Money  answereth  all  things,"  the  support 
of  mission  work  depended  upon  thrift  in  trade.  Though 
the  traffickers  in  brandy  and  peltry  were  often  brought  into 
collision  with  the  priests,  the  parties  which  both  of  them 
represented  were  considered  as  equally  essential  to  the 
success  of  each  successive  enterprise ;  so  that,  as  we  have 
said,  it  was  not  thought  necessary  to  ask  leave  of  residence 
or  grant  of  territory.  Whether  the  French  monarch  con- 
ferred  his  vast  gift  of  geometrically  bounded  spaces  and 

15 


226  INDIAN   TENURE   OF  LAND. 

reaches  of  dominion,  of  island  or  continent,  on  individuals 
or  companies,  he  never  gave  a  thought  to  extinguishing 
an  Indian  title,  or  perplexing  himself  with  the  tenure  by 
which  the  aborigines  held  the  regions  given  away  so  lav- 
ishly by  him.1 

When  on  the  expansion  of  our  population  by  pioneer 
emigration  from  Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  and  Kentucky, 
the  Americans  came  into  hostile  relations  with  the  old 
French  posts  beyond  the  Ohio,  they  assumed  that,  having 
conquered  the  French  and  the  English,  they  might  take 
possession  of  any  territory  previously  held  by  them.  The 
British  from  Canada,  and  such  of  them  as  still  lingered 
holding  the  lake  and  river  posts,  under  the  chagrin  of  their 
defeat  endeavored  to  instigate  many  Indian  tribes  into  a 
conspiracy  against  the  inflowing  emigrants.  They  also 
prompted  the  Indians  to  affirm  that  the  English  had  never 
received  any  deeds  or  titles  to  the  disputed  lands.  These 
controversies  were  more  or  less  satisfactorily  disposed  of 
by  new  treaties,  beginning  with  that  of  Fort  Harmar.  But 
when  the  emigration  reached  the  farther  French  posts,  the 
plea  was  that  the  French  had  never  really  owned  any  terri- 
tory there,  but  had  set  up  their  trading-houses  and  mis- 
sions merely  by  allowance,  —  neither  receiving  nor  asking 
formal  covenants  to  do  so,  —  and  thus  had  never  acquired 
a  permanent  title  to  the  soil. 

The  theory  under  which  Europeans  came  and  took  pos- 
session of  parts  of  this  continent,  and  have  been  led  by  the 
development  of  circumstances  to  claim  the  whole  of  it,  was 
in  their  view  a  very  simple  one.  So  far  as  regarded  any 
rival  questions  among  themselves,  the  right  of  occupancy 
was  admitted  to  be  founded  upon  discovery,  confirmed  by  act- 
ual entry  upon  any  defined  portion  of  the  territory.  This 
was  the  political  element  of  the  right.  But  as  regards  the 

1  I  have  a  note  of  a  quotation  from  Lamartine,  though  I  have  misplaced 
•the  reference  to  it,  in  these  words:  "Le  globe  est  la  propriete  de  1'homme;  le 
nouveau  continent,  1'Amerique,  est  la  propriete  de  1' Europe." 


EUROPEAN   RIGHT   TO   AMERICA.  227 

moral  right,  involving  a  dispossession  of  human  beings 
then  occupying  the  soil,  a  full  justification  was  found  in 
a  more  or  less  emphasized  assertion  of  a  divine  preroga- 
tive of  Christians  over  and  against  all  heathendom.  Very 
rarely,  and  always  ineffectually,  was  this  sweeping  claim 
challenged  or  discredited.  Roger  Williams,  from  the  first 
and  always  a  radical  champion  of  the  natural  rights  of  all 
men,  struck  at  what  he  regarded  as  the  fundamental  false- 
hood involved  in  this  claim  when  he  denied  the  right  of  a 
Christian  sovereign  to  give  a  patent  to  the  territory  of  the 
natives  on  the  ground  of  their  being  heathens.  He  wrote 
in  his  "  Key,"  etc.,  that  it  was  "  a  sinful  opinion  amongst 
many,  that  Christians  have  right  to  heathen  lands."  Wil- 
liams's  fellow  Rhode  Islander,  Coddington,  wrote  from 
Newport  to  Massachusetts,  in  1640,  a  letter  from  his  com- 
panions, in  which,  as  Winthrop  says,  the  Rhode  Islanders 
"  declared  their  dislike  of  such  as  would  have  the  Indians 
rooted  out  as  being  of  the  cursed  race  of  Ham ;  and  their 
desire  of  our  mutual  accord  in  seeking  to  gain  them  by 
justice  and  kindness,  and  withal  to  watch  over  them  to 
prevent  any  danger  by  them." 

The  Friends,  or  early  Quakers,  also  stood  for  the  natural 
rights  of  the  savages.  In  Penn's  interview  —  as  he  was 
about  leaving  England  —  with  Charles  II.,  the  King  asked 
him  what  would  prevent  his  getting  into  the  savages'  war- 
kettle,  as  a  savory  meal  for  them.  Penn  replied  :  "  Their 
own  inner  light.  Moreover,  as  I  intend  equitably  to  buy 
their  lands,  I  shall  not  be  molested."  "  Buy  their  lands ! " 
said  the  amazed  monarch ;  "  why,  is  not  the  whole  land 
mine  ?"  "  No,  your  Majesty,"  answered  Penn.  "  We  have 
no  right  to  their  lands ;  they  are  the  original  occupants  of 
the  soil."  "What!  have  I  not  the  right  of  discovery?" 
asked  Charles.  "  Well,"  said  Penn,  "  just  suppose  that  a 
canoe  full  of  savages  should  by  some  accident  discover 
Great  Britain:  would  you  vacate  or  sell?"  Yet  Charles's 
great  predecessor,  William  the  Conqueror,  when  he 


228  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

stepped  on  the  English  shore,  said  he  "  took  seisin  of  the 
land." 

If  the  Indians  could  have  been  parties  to  the  argument 
and  discussions  as  to  their  natural  rights  compared  with 
those  of  European  sovereigns  whose  mariners  discovered 
the  continent,  they  might  have  suggested  that  if  their  pos- 
session of  the  continent,  though  only  as  roamers  over  it, 
did  not  assure  their  ownership,  certainly  the  mere  skirting 
of  its  ocean-shores  by  a  crew  of  foreign  sailors  did  not 
confer  a  better  title. 

But  these  exceptional  pleas  for  the  native  rights  of  the 
savages,  as  human  beings,  in  the  soil  which  they  occupied, 
were  but  feeble  in  view  of  the  prejudgment  of  the  case  in 
favor  of  the  prerogative  of  Christians  over  heathen. 

The  claim  as  to  the  reduction  of  the  native  tribes  to  the 
state  of  subjects  of  the  monarch  to  whom  the  settlers  among 
them  owed  allegiance  seems  to  have  been  very  distinctly ' 
and  warmly  contested  by  King  Philip,  in  the  contentions 
between  him  and  the  authorities  of  Plymouth  and  Massa- 
chusetts. Practically,  these  authorities  acted  as  if  they 
acceded,  as  by  commission  or  otherwise,  to  the  functions 
of  the  crown  over  the  Indians.  Even  the  natives  may  have 
appreciated  a  difference  between  being  subjects  of  the  King 
of  England  and  being  subjects  of  his  subjects.  It  was  es- 
pecially aggravating  to  the  haughty  sachem  Philip  and  his 
fellows  to  be  summoned  as  culprit  subjects  to  the  colony 
courts ;  nor  was  their  irritation  relieved  at  being  told  that 
these  courts  were  representing  a  foreign  crown.  The  chiefs 
also  complained  that  their  own  people  were  thus  drawn 
from  their  former  allegiance  to  themselves  as  sachems. 
They  said  the  whites  had  no  right  to  intrude  themselves 
between  them  and  their  people,  or  to  interfere  with  their 
jurisdiction  in  their  forest  domains ;  nor  had  the  whites, 
unless  their  intervention  was  asked  by  both  parties,  any 
justification  for  intermeddling  between  Indians  and  Indians. 
The  whites  had  sentenced  and  hung  one  of  Philip's  Indians 


INDIANS   SUBJECTS   OF   EUROPEAN   MONARCHS.  229 

for  killing  another  of  them :  Philip  insisted  that  in  this 
case  the  administration  of  justice  should  have  been  left  to 
him.  When  Philip  once  proposed  an  arbitration  on  the 
difficulties,  which  had  become  aggravated,  between  him  and 
his  white  neighbors,  doubting  their  impartiality,  he  urged 
that  the  Governor  of  New  York  and  an  Indian  king  should 
be  the  umpires.  He  was  willing  to  take  his  place  and  hold 
his  rank  with  those  who  held  the  highest  authority  as  repre- 
senting the  English  crown ;  but  he  could  not  be  made  to 
understand  or  to  approve  the  process  by  which  he  who  had 
been  obeyed  as  a  sovereign  over  his  own  people,  previous  to 
the  coming  of  the  white  men,  was  reduced  before  a  petty 
colonial  magistrate  into  the  condition  of  one  of  his  own 
subjects  before  himself.  To  the  Europeans,  however,  there 
was  a  logical  consequence  in  this  reduction  of  Indian  chief- 
tains to  the  state  of  subjects  of  their  monarchs,  following 
from  the  extension  of  foreign  sovereignty  over  the  terri- 
tory, whether  or  not  the  whites  had  gone  through  the  form 
of  purchasing  title.  And  when  afterwards  some  of  the  na- 
tive chiefs  were  proud  of  calling  a  foreign  monarch  their 
Great  Father,  others  preferred  to  regard  him  as  a  brother 
potentate. 

This  cool  assumption  on  the  part  of  the  European  adven- 
turers, discoverers,  and  colonists  here  was  adopted  as  an 
axiom  to  the  inference  that  their  respective  monarchs  ac- 
ceded to  territorial  rights  to  the  soil.  It  was  that  the 
Indian  tribes  among  whom  they  planted  themselves  became 
fellow-subjects  of  their  own  foreign  sovereigns,  and  thence- 
forward owed  them  allegiance.  The  Spaniards  at  once 
acted  on  this  assumption,  and  put  in  force  everything  that 
followed  from  it.  When  the  great  circumnavigator,  Sir 
Francis  Drake,  entered  the  harbor  of  San  Francisco  and 
explored  it, —  not  knowing  that  the  Spaniards  had  preceded 
him, — he  took  possession  for  the  crown  of  England,  and 
called  the  country  "  New  Albion."  The  natives  were  quiet 
and  friendly.  They  wore  feather  head-dresses,  somewhat 


230  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

after  the  fashion  of  a  crown.  One  of  the  chiefs  giving 
Drake  this  "  emblem  of  royalty,"  he  interpreted  the  act  as 
an  abdication  of  sovereignty  in  favor  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 

In  some  cases  there  was  a  degree  of  formality  in  the 
methods  by  which  the  European  intruders  sought  to  make 
intelligible  to  the  natives  the  fact — whether  admitted  by 
them  or  denied — that  they  were  henceforward  subjects  of 
monarch s  across  the  salt  sea. 

It  must  have  mystified  the  aborigines,  till  use  had  emp- 
tied the  phrase  of  meaning,  to  be  told  that  the  king  of 
Spain,  of  France,  or  of  England  was  their  Great  Father. 
A  pretty  fair  test  for  measuring  the  relative  manliness  and 
native  spirit  of  different  forest  chieftains  might  be  found 
in  the  attitude  in  which  they  placed  themselves,  secretly 
or  avowedly,  towards  the  sentence  announcing  to  them 
their  bounden  duty  of  subjection,  allegiance,  and  loyalty  to 
a  foreign  superior.  Some  chieftains,  with  their  tribes, 
allowed  it  to  pass  unchallenged,  especially  when  it  assured 
to  them  the  desired  material  aid  of  their  European  guests 
in  their  own  internecine  strifes.  Others  made  no  open  re- 
monstrance, content  that  silence  should  conceal  their  dis- 
dain at  the  assumption.  Some,  however,  there  were  who 
from  the  first  doubted  the  grounds  of  it,  and  as  they  gradu- 
ally came  to  understand  what  the  assertion  of  their  subject 
state  signified,  and  what  it  carried  with  it,  stoutly  and 
resolutely  repudiated  the  claim.  This  was  emphatically 
the  case  with  each  of  the  successive  Indian  chieftains 
known  in  our  history  as  the  master-minds  among  ordinary 
savages,  who  sought  to  combine  their  tribes  for  rooting  out 
the  white  man.  Philip,  Pontiac,  and  Tecumseh  were  the 
patriots  of  their  race. 

Instead  of  attempting  to  indicate  in  any  precise  terms 
the  view  which  Europeans,  in  anticipation  and  at  their 
first  coming,  took  of  the  rights  of  tenancy  and  occupancy 
of  the  savages  on  this  continent,  let  us  come  to  the  concep- 
tion which  we  wish  to  reach,  by  stating  the  actual  result, 


PREROGATIVES   OP   CIVILIZATION.  231 

either  of  theory  or  practice,  in  the  disposal  of  the  whole 
question  by  the  whites.  We  can  afterwards  acquaint  our- 
selves with  any  terms  or  bargains  by  which  the  English 
alone  of  all  the  colonists,  with  a  slight  exception  for  the 
Dutch  and  the  Swedes,  appear  to  have  qualified  their  gen- 
eral assumption  that  the  Indians  had  no  territorial  rights 
whatever.  In  treating  in  later  pages  upon  the  subject  of 
the  cession  made  by  Indian  chiefs  or  tribes  of  portions 
of  territory,  —  by  private  bargain,  covenant,  or  formal 
treaty  transfer,  —  we  shall  have  occasion  to  note  what 
were  the  Indians'  views  of  their  land  tenure,  and  what  was 
the  valuation  which  they  set  or  allowed  the  white  man  to 
set  upon  the  property  surrendered. 

The  result  of  the  white  man's  view  of  the  tenure  of  the 
natives  to  the  soil,  as  we  are  to  attempt  to  define  it,  was, — 
as  we  see  it  now  over  the  larger  part  of  this  continent,  and 
as  coming  generations  will  surely  see  over  the  remainder 
of  it,  —  this,  the  succession  of  the  civilized  white  man,  or 
possibly  the  civilized  Indian,  to  the  savage  red  man  in 
occupying  it.  This  was  from  the  first,  and  will  be,  inevi- 
table. The  nature  and  constitution  of  things,  as  we  say, 
decide  it.  According  to  our  preference  of  thought  and 
phrase,  we  may  assert  either  that  fate  compelled  or  that  a 
wise  Providence  decreed  it.  The  reasoning  was  as  fol- 
lows :  If  the  earth  and  man  have  the  relation  of  place  and 
occupant  to  each  other,  then  each  portion  of  the  earth  and 
the  whole  of  it  will  belong  to  those  men  whose  best  use  of 
it  will  give  them  the  mastery  of  it.  If  this  earth  is  to  sup- 
port human  life,  then  the  extending  and  increasing  needs 
of  man  must  decide  the  conditions  under  which  it  shall 
be  populated  and  ruled.  If  the  magnificent  resources  of 
this  continent,  instead  of  being  unused  or  wasted,  were  to 
be  turned  to  the  account  of  man's  subsistence,  improve- 
ment, development,  and  general  welfare,  then  certainly  the 
red  man's  habits  and  ways  of  life  must  give  place  to  those 
of  the  white  man.  All  our  regrets  and  reproaches,  —  our 


232  INDIAN  TENURE  OF  LAND. 

laments  over  the  grievous  wrongs  inflicted  upon  the  sav- 
ages, and  our  reproaches  upon  our  ancestors  here  or  upon 
the  continuous  course  of  our  Government  in  its  dealings 
with  the  natives,  —  all  these  complaints  and  censures  must 
attach  only  to  the  process,  the  way,  the  attendant  acts  and 
methods,  by  which  the  savages  have  been  despoiled  and  the 
whites  have  come  into  possession.  Let  the  statement  just 
made  be  strictly  limited,  lest  it  be  supposed  to  exaggerate 
a  plea  or  to  prejudice  it.  It  urges  only  and  simply  the  fair 
judgment,  that  the  white  man's  uses  of  this  continent 
rightfully  succeed  to  and  displace  the  red  man's  uses  of  it. 
This  is  not  saying,  nor  necessarily  implying,  that  the  white 
man  should  displace  and  exterminate  the  red  man.  Quite 
other  and  far  less  simple  and  well-grounded  reasoning  and 
argument  and  dealing  with  facts  and  principles  come  in, 
when,  from  standing  for  the  fair  uses  of  enormous  portions 
of  the  earth's  territory,  we  pass  to  the  treatment  of  those 
who  were  found  in  occupancy  of  it. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  general  and  popular  judgment 
of  the  inevitableness  of  the  result  —  namely,  the  displace- 
ment of  the  natives  of  the  soil  —  should  attach  the  same 
character  of  necessity  and  fate  to  the  means  by  which  the 
result  has  been  brought  about ;  and  should  urge  that  every 
successive  step  and  act,  however  harsh  or  cruel  or  ruth- 
less, by  which  the  savages  have  been  pressed  or  crushed  or 
slaughtered,  is  to  be  ascribed  to  the  stern  compulsion  of 
circumstances.  Of  late  years  at  least,  a  far  more  discrimi- 
nating and  considerate  view  has  been  taken  of  the  object 
to  be  realized,  as  involving  one  or  another  method  for 
reaching  it.  The  conviction  is  now  as  firmly  cherished 
through  our  nation  at  large  as  it  ever  was  by  the  most 
ruthless  body  of  the  earliest  colonists,  that  the  land  must 
be  rid  of  savages  ;  even  the  most  remote  regions  now 
occupied  by  them  must  sooner  or  later  find  in  them  tamed 
and  civilized  inhabitants.  While  this  conviction  holds  un- 
qualified, civilization  is  substituted  for  extermination  as  the 


CIVILIZATION  AGAINST  BARBARISM.  233 

method  for  realizing  the  conviction.  The  last  Report  of 
the  United  States  Commissioner  for  Indian  Affairs  (1881) 
is  emphatic  on  this  point.  He  says  :  — 

"  There  is  no  one  who  has  "been  a  close  observer  of  Indian  history 
and  the  effect  of  contact  of  Indians  with  civilization,  who  is  not 
well  satisfied  that  one  of  two  things  must  eventually  take  place ; 
to  wit,  either  civilization  or  extermination  of  the  Indian.  Savage 
and  civilized  life  cannot  live  and  prosper  on  the  same  ground. 
One  of  the  two  must  die.  If  the  Indians  are  to  he  civilized  and 
become  a  happy  and  prosperous  people,  which  is  certainly  the  ob- 
ject and  intention  of  our  Government,  they  must  learn  our  language 
and  adopt  our  modes  of  life.  We  are  fifty  millions  of  people,  and 
they  are  only  one  fourth  of  one  million.  The  few  must  yield  to  the 
many." 

Anticipating  a  matter  which  will  demand  our  deliberate 
notice  farther  on,  the  Commissioner  adds,  that,  as  we  can- 
not expect  the  Indians  to  abandon  their  own  and  to  adopt 
our  habits  of  life  while  we  carry  victuals  and  clothes  to 
their  reservations,  we  must  compel  them  to  work  for  a  sub- 
sistence as  we  ourselves  do. 

Happily  for  all  who  desire  to  view  this  momentous  and 
profoundly  interesting  question  with  the  utmost  candor  and 
intelligence,  not  forgetful  of  all  humane  sentiments,  the 
question  is  not  one  that  concerns  merely  the  long  or  the 
recent  past  in  our  country.  On  the  contrary  the  right, 
the  just,  the  wise,  the  expedient,  the  best  possible  way  in 
which  the  civilized  whites  as  a  people,  and  through  their 
government,  can  and  ought  to  deal  with  the  original,  native, 
and  savage  occupants  of  our  territory  is  one  of  the  most 
living  and  exciting  and  serious  questions  of  our  day.  The 
perplexing  issues  on  the  trial  of  which  we  have  had  two 
and  a  half  centuries  of  practical  experience  have  never 
been  settled,  and  are  open  to-day.  This  experience  seems 
to  have  made  us  no  wiser;  it  has  not  introduced  any 
essentially  new  elements  for  our  guidance,  nor  relieved 
the  sadness  and  the  suffering  and  the  injustice  which  in- 


234  INDIAN  TENURE   OF  LAND. 

vest  the  whole  subject  before  us.  Substantially  the  same 
course  which  the  white  men  first  pursued  towards  the  na- 
tives, when  in  feeble  companies  of  way-worn  adventurers 
and  colonists  they  invaded  the  soil,  has  followed  on  step 
by  step,  as  a  mighty  nation,  swarming  to  half  a  hundred 
millions,  with  all  its  increase  of  power  and  humanity,  has 
pushed  its  frontiers  into  savage  domains  steadily  and  as 
resistless  as  the  flow  of  its  own  river  torrents. 

To  revert  to  the  point  first  stated, — the  right  of  civilized 
man  to  succeed  to  wild  territory  occupied  by  savages,  —  de- 
ferring for  the  present  the  subject  of  the  treatment  of 
its  occupants.  We  admit  the  right  of  human  beings  on 
occupying  wild  territory  to  exterminate  all  noxious  ver- 
min and  wild  beasts,  to  cut  down  forests,  to  dam  streams, 
and  to  do  everything  else  on  and  with  the  soil  to  make 
it  secure  and  habitable.  An  arresting  scruple  comes  in 
when  this  right  is  inferred  to  include  or  to  justify  the 
allowance  that  a  more  civilized  or  powerful  body  of  new 
comers  may  trample  upon,  drive  off,  or  subjugate  an  in- 
ferior race  occupying  the  territory.  Now  practically,  with 
a  fair,  frank  avowal,  we  may  as  well  make  short  work  of 
all  ingenious  pleadings  and  subterfuges  here,  and  speak 
right  out  the  historic  fact,  —  the  fact  of  to-day,  —  that  the 
white  man  made  a  logical  syllogism  which  connected  his 
right  to  improve  the  soil  with  his  way  of  treating  the 
Indians ;  namely,  he  satisfied  himself  that  the  'savages 
were  a  part  of  the  vermin  and  wild  beasts  which  he  was 
justified  in  removing,  and  compelled  to  remove,  before  the 
territory  would  serve  its  use.  However  wide  off  from  this 
view  any  of  the  early  colonists  here  may  have  been,  no 
candid  person  can  deny  that  the  view  steadily  came  to  fill 
the  eye  and  mind  of  those  whom  we  should  have  thought 
would  have  been  most  shocked  by  it. 

From  the  first  European  occupancy  of  this  continent  up 
to  these  recent  years  when  it  has  been  sternly  rebuked, 
the  basis,  the  real  root,  of  every  assumption  and  justifica- 


INDIANS  REGARDED   AS  VERMIN.  235 

tion  involved  in  our  treatment  of  the  Indians  proceeded 
upon  this  opinion  or  belief,  —  that  they  are  in  fact  simply 
a  part  of  the  vermin  and  wild  beasts  which  must  be  ex- 
terminated in  order  that  the  territory  may  be  habitable 
by  civilized  man.  There  are  infinitely  varied  degrees  of 
frankness  and  fulness  in  which  that  radical  and  sweep- 
ing opinion  may  be  held  or  expressed.  Those  who  have 
successively  encountered  the  perils  and  massacres  of  fron- 
tier life  (pioneers  and  Indian  fighters)  for  two  and  a  half 
centuries,  the  rank  and  file  of  our  armies  at  Northern 
and  Western  posts,  have,  with  very  rare  exceptions,  boldly 
and  sternly  avowed  their  belief  that  Indians  are  tigers, 
wolves,  and  wild-cats,  and  as  such  in  the  sight  of  man 
and  God  must  be  exterminated.  Those  who  have  liad 
most  to  do  with  the  Indians  are  almost  unanimously  of 
that  belief;  and  very  many  men  who  are  not  cruel,  nor 
vindictive,  nor  careless  of  their  words  or  judgments,  have 
accorded  in  it.  Statesmen,  magistrates,  and  various  func- 
tionaries who  have  had  responsible  and  practical  relations 
with  the  Indians  have  with  milder  terms,  and  perhaps  with 
some  qualifying  or  softening  clauses,  expressed  their  con- 
viction that  the  savage  is  more  a  beast  than  a  man.  This 
opinion  is  now  held  as  literally  and  as  firmly  by  vast  num- 
bers among  us  as  it  ever  was ;  subject,  however,  from  some 
of  them  to  the  qualification  that  the  savage  is  such  a 
peculiar  sort  of  a  beast,  that,  while  there  is  any  possi- 
bility of  his  being  domesticated,  his  slaughter  ought  to  be 
deferred. 

A  few,  a  very  few,  of  those  who  with  means  of  a  like 
sort  for  knowing  the  Indians  have  listened  to  this  classi- 
fication of  them  with  noxious  vermin  have,  with  degrees 
of  earnestness  in  their  protest,  remonstrated  against  it. 
The  humane,  the  philanthropist,  the  Christian  missionary 
have  sternly  denied  the  assumption,  and  have  censured 
with  withering  denunciations  the  course  of  power  or  policy 
which  has  proceeded  upon  it  in  dealing  with  the  Indians 


236  INDIAN  TENURE   OF  LAND. 

as  if  they  were  beasts  and  not  men.  And,  of  course,  those 
who  thus  protest  and  denounce  do  not  fail  to  affirm  that 
it  is  the  white  man's  treatment  of  the  Indian  that  has 
infuriated  him,  and  made  him  act  like  a  tearing  beast  in 
his  torture  and  rage ;  and  that  in  fact  the  white  man  has 
proved  the  wilder  beast  of  the  two. 

If  it  should  be  regarded  as  worth  the  while  of  any  two 
earnest  disputants,  the  one  standing  for  and  the  other  chal- 
lenging the  course  pursued  towards  the  aborigines  on  the 
ground  of  their  being  noxious  and  pestilent  nuisances  on 
the  soil,  the  philanthropical  pleader  could  hardly  fail  to  inti- 
mate a  suggestion  something  like  the  following:  that  in 
every  great  city  of  Christendom  there  are  proportionately 
to  the  population  of  each  of  them  more  men,  women,  and 
children  in  the  slums  and  drains  of  vile  filth,  desperate  in- 
competency,  wretchedness,  vice,  and  destitution  than  there 
are  of  the  original  native  race  on  this  continent ;  that  we 
do  not  deny  to  the  most  degraded  and  worthless  of  these 
wretches  some  harborage  and  dole  of  pity,  nor  the  right 
to  live  out  their  days  in  their  own  fashion  ;  but  that  on 
the  contrary  we  assume  the  burden  and  protection  of  them 
at  our  own  cost.  And  why,  it  would  be  asked  by  the  phil- 
anthropist, might  not  the  same  course  pursued  towards  the 
human  vermin  of  the  wilderness  be  taken  with  these  ver- 
min of  cities,  —  the  Indian  having  at  least  the  one  advan- 
tage of  being  ventilated  by  the  free  air  ? 

The  only  answer  that  seems  to  offer  itself  to  this  ques- 
tion is,  that  the  comparison  between  the  nature  and  the 
state  of  the  Indians  and  the  condition  of  the  most  wretched 
classes  in  cities  is  not  wholly  one  of  likeness,  but  yields  a 
marked  difference.  The  vilest  classes  in  the  cities  are  the 
outgrowth,  the  refuse,  the  deposit,  the  residuum  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  so  deserve  the  care  and  pity  of  those  who  enjoy 
its  full  blessings  ;  while  the  Indians  oppose  a  fresh,  resist- 
ing force  to  the  very  beginnings  of  civilization.  They 
are  all  merged  and  overshadowed  by  the  disabilities  and 


SCRIPTURAL  AUTHORITY  FOR   CHRISTIANS.  237 

wretchedness  of  pauperism,  ignorance,  and  the  lack  of  any 
spur  in  themselves  to  shake  off  their  squalor  and  barbar- 
ism ;  there  are  none  among  them  able  and  disposed  to  do 
for  them  what  prosperous  and  merciful  people  do  for  the 
refuse  of  civilization. 

If  we  thus  find  the  root  or  starting-point  of  the  white 
man's  whole  course  towards  the  Indian  to  lie  in  the  as- 
sumption or  the  belief  that  he  was  a  part  of  the  vermin 
of  the  soil  whose  removal  or  extinction  was  essential  to 
secure  the  white  man's  unquestioned  right  to  make  waste 
territory  habitable  by  civilized  human  beings,  it  is  but  fair 
that  we  examine  the  reasons  or  the  evidence  which  the 
white  man  had  for  coming  to  that  opinion.  And  fairness 
requires  the  statement  that  the  white  man  did  not  begin 
his  intercourse  with  the  natives  with  that  prejudged  view 
of  them.  That  opinion  was  not  a  theory  to  start  from,  — 
certainly  not  with  the  leading  English  colonists.  Some  of 
the  earliest  intercourse  of  the  English  more  especially,  but 
also  of  the  Frencli  and  Dutch  comers  here,  with  individual 
natives  or  with  groups  of  them,  was  marked  by  consider- 
ate sympathy  and  generosity.  And  the  whites  acknowl- 
edged it  as  such ;  they  recognized  in  it  human  kindness, 
—  the  response  of  fellow-feeling  in  the  heart,  which  knits 
kinship  independent  of  race.  It  must  be  urged  that  the 
whites  did  not  from  the  beginning  assume  as  a  foregone 
conclusion  that  they  would  need  to  exterminate  the  red 
men  utterly,  as  a  condition  of  their  own  comfort  and  se- 
curity. Indeed,  in  many  very  significant  instances  they 
seem  to  have  sincerely  felt  and  acknowledged  that  they 
had  human  obligations  to  fulfil  towards  the  savages.  It 
is  true  that  all  the  Protestants  of  those  times  did  believe, 
as  on  most  sufficient  and  positive  Scriptural  authority,  that 
Christians  had  a  right  to  possess  themselves  of  soil  occu- 
pied by  heathens,  and  to  assume  the  mastery  over  heathens. 
But  they  by  no  means  claimed  or  believed  that  it  followed 
from  this,  as  included  in  it,  that  they  had  a  right  to  put 


238  INDIAN   TENUEE   OF   LAND. 

the  heathen  to  death  as  they  did  the  bears  and  wolves 
and  panthers.  The  claim  of  possession  and  mastery  over 
the  heathen  was  avowedly  understood  to  carry  with  it  the 
obligation  to  civilize  and  Christianize  them,  to  treat  them 
with  human  kindness  ;  and  in  this  way,  while  standing  to 
them  as  benefactors,  to  obtain  their  good-will  and  security 
from  their  hate  and  violence.  A  careful  study  of  the  pri- 
mary sources  of  information  concerning  the  earliest  inter- 
course of  the  white  and  the  red  men,  always  excepting  the 
Spanish  invaders,  will  abundantly  prove  that  the  colonists 
felt  and  owned  an  obligation  to  the  natives  as  human  be- 
ings. But  the  continuance  of  that  intercourse  for  a  few 
years  supplanted  this  obligation  by  the  vermin  theory. 

This  ruthless  view  of  the  natives  as  belonging  to  the 
wild  beasts  of  the  forest  and  the  valleys,  not  having  been 
assumed  or  acted  upon  from  the  first  by  the  Europeans, 
was  of  subsequent  adoption.  Those  who  have  ever  since 
avowed  it,  maintained  it,  and  resolutely  and  sternly  put 
it  into  effect  in  exterminating  warfare,  and  all  who  allow 
this  view  plausibility  and  acquiesce  in  it  without  protest, 
stand  ready  to  vindicate  it  as  certified  by  actual,  positive 
experience.  They  say  that  it  has  been  forced  upon  their 
convictions  by  an  infinite  variety  and  a  vast  amount  of 
evidence,  the  result  of  actual  trial.  All  purposes  and 
efforts  (they  will  plead)  to  treat  Indians  as  other  than 
vermin  have  been  utterly  thwarted  and  wasted.  More 
than  two  centuries  of  more  or  less  considerate  scheming 
and  working  for  the  Indians,  as  tractable  and  improvable 
human  beings,  have  been  demonstrated  to  be  failures. 

Stress  is  laid  upon  this  very  significant  affirmation,  that 
those  who  were  found  living  on  this  whole  continent  from 
the  first  coming  of  the  whites  down  to  this  day,  so  far 
from  showing  among  them  any  self-working  process  of  im- 
provement or  development  of  manhood,  have  been  steadily 
deteriorating ;  and  that,  on  the  whole,  —  leaving  out  of 
view  the  wrongs  inflicted  on  the  Indians  by  the  whites,  even 


REASONS   FOR  DISPOSSESSING  THE  NATIVES.  239 

if  wrong  and  outrage  have  predominated  in  that  treatment, 

—  everything  which  the  whites  have  sincerely,  humanely, 
and  intelligently  intended  for  their  benefit  has  invariably 
been  a  bane  and  an  injury  to  them,  —  depriving  them  of 
their  wild  virility,  and  reducing  them  to  a  mean,  abject, 
and  grovelling  incompetency  or  idiocy.     Under  the  influ- 
ences of  civilization  which  have  come  the  nearest  to  taming 
the  Indian,  it   is  affirmed  that  he  always  exhibits  those 
reversionary  characteristics  shown  by  that  species  of  dog 
among  the  Esquimaux  which  is  a  domesticated  wolf:   he 
exchanges  a  howl  for  a  bark.     More  than  this,  intelligent 
and  humane  observers  have  remarked  that  the  same  influ- 
ences and  means  which  advance  the  white  man  in  steady 
progress  and  accumulating  good,  have  a  deteriorating  and 
pernicious  effect  upon  the  Indians.     The  enormous  amount 
of  materials  and  helps  for  improving  the  condition  of  the 
Indians  which  our  Government,  for  instance,  has  supplied, 

—  implements  and  tools  for  husbandry  and  domestic  thrift, 
stock-cattle,  goods  of  every  kind, —  have  been  wasted  on 
unappreciative  and  swinish  receivers,  and  have  simply  re- 
sulted in  pauperizing  them  and  making  them  more  lazy. 
The   cooking-stoves,  frying-pans,   and   other   like   utensils 
which  have  been  sent  into  the  Indian  country  by  the  hun- 
dred  thousand   to   prompt   the    squaws   to  improve  their 
housewifery,  and  which  careful  white  matrons  pride  them- 
selves upon  burnishing  and  keeping  for  a  lifetime,  rust  out 
from  filth  and  neglect  in  a  few  days  of  use. 

It  was  then  through  force  of  the  reasons  following  that 
the  whites,  as  soon  as  they  became  acquainted  with  the 
facts  about  the  Indians,  justified  themselves  in  taking  pos- 
session of  the  wild  territory  occupied  by  them  :  — 

1.  They  found  the  native  tribes  in  a  state  of  internecine 
conflict,  fighting  with,  subduing,  and  exterminating  each 
other. 

2.  They  satisfied  themselves  that  no  one  tribe  on  the 
locality  on  which  for  the  time  being  it  happened,  so  to 


240  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

speak,  to  be  encamped,  had  any  long-secured  and  enjoyed 
ancestral  right  of  domain  upon  it ;  they  simply  occupied  it 
from  stress  of  circumstance  or  by  result  of  conquest. 

3.  They  failed  to  see  any  signs  of  improvement  or  better- 
ment on  the  soil,  marking  an  appropriated  ownership ;  no 
dwelling,  no  fence,  no  well,  no  stable  token  of  proprietor- 
ship appeared.     The  wild  rovers  or  campers  left  no  other 
trace  of  themselves  than  does  a  horde  of  buffaloes  or  a 
pack  of  wolves. 

4.  Very  early  in  the  civilized  occupancy  of  this  country 
the  conviction  rooted  itself  that  there  was  no  possibility  of 
a  joint  and  peaceful  occupancy  by  the  two  races.     No  cor- 
don could  keep  them  apart;  one  of  the  two,  the  civilized  or 
the  barbarian,  must  have  the  whole  or  none. 

Having  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  right  of  local 
tribes  to  portions  of  the  territory  on  which  the  white  men 
found  them  was  the  right  of  actual  possession  or  occu- 
pancy for  different  and  unknown  terms  of  time  of  regions 
won  by  conquest  and  liable  at  any  time  to  be  yielded  to  a 
stronger  party,  another  suggestion  comes  up,  which  seems 
to  intimate  an  acknowledgment  by  the  whites  of  a  certain 
legality  in  their  tenure  of  the  soil  by  the  Indians.  The 
colonists  of  New  England  from  the  first  settlement,  as 
individuals  and  in  towns,  did  consider  it  a  matter  of  duty, 
or  security,  to  obtain  conveyances  of  land-titles  from  the 
savages.  By  what  right  did  a  petty  sachem  or  a  tribal 
chief  deed  away  and  alienate  the  lands  of  his  people  ?  We 
can  answer  only  that  the  whites  put  the  idea  of  sale  into 
his  head ;  suggested  it  to  him ;  and  in  so  doing  seem  to 
have  justified  him  in  assuming  the  right,  to  have  recognized 
that  he  had  it  so  far  as  to  meet  their  wishes,  and  to  have 
accepted  his  scrawls  and  scratches  of  bows  and  tomahawks 
as  signatures  completing  a  quit-claim.  We  know  that  trans- 
actions of  this  sort  were  disputed  as  invalid  within  a  very 
short  time  after  they  had  been  made,  and  that  a  claim  was 
afterwards  advanced  by  the  representatives  of  foreign  sover- 


ATTESTATION   OP  INDIAN   DEEDS.  241 

eigns  that  all  deeds  to  land  here  made  by  the  Indians  were 
worthless.  The  theory  being  that  all  wild  territory  discov- 
ered by  a  subject  vested  in  his  monarch,  the  inference  was 
drawn  that  all  subdivisions  of  it,  large  or  small,  needed  the 
royal  sanction  to  convey  possession  of  them.  Governor  An- 
dros  threw  all  the  people  of  Massachusetts  into  a  panic  by 
asserting  this  doctrine.  Lands  held  here  directly  from  the 
Indians  by  deed  to  an  individual,  or  by  partitions  of  a  town- 
ship through  the  same  sort  of  instruments,  might  even 
have  the  sanction  of  the  General  Court  of  the  colony ;  but 
as  that  court  had  acted  illegally  by  illegal  use  of  the  char- 
ter, and  the  charter  had  been  vacated,  all  proceedings  un- 
der it  were  null.  The  trepidation  of  the  disfranchised  and 
non-suited  Puritan  folk  was  intense  till  they  stiffened  them- 
selves to  assert  their  rights  of  possession  by  purchase  and 
improvement.  Andros's  doctrine  would  have  left  their 
tenure  of  the  soil  hardly  any  firmer  than  was  that  of  the 
Indian. 

In  various  parts  of  the  older  settlements  of  the  country, 
preserved  among  the  towns'  records  or  in  the  cabinets  of 
individual  housekeepers,  are  cherished  deeds  and  instru- 
ments of  conveyance  from  the  Indians,  which  those  who 
hold  them  regard  as  something  more  than  mere  curiosities. 
They  are  held  in  many  cases  as  evidences  of  an  honest, 
humane,  and  generous  purpose  on  the  part  of  magistrates 
or  ancestors  to  recognize  the  natural  territorial  rights  of 
those  found  on  the  soil.  The  efforts  to  attest  these  instru- 
ments by  the  generous  use  of  English  letters  in  unpro- 
nounceable Indian  names  for  persons  and  for  places,  and 
the  "  armorial  bearings,"  as  La  Hontan  would  call  them, 
of  the  chiefs,  certify  at  least  to  their  antiquity.  Many  a 
New  England  farmer,  showing  his  rough  acres  to  a  visitor, 
will  say  complacently,  "  Our  family  hold  this  estate  from  the 
Indians." 

The  next  question  in  order  is  this :  When  an  Indian 
executed  a  deed  of  land  to  white  men,  what  rights  of  his 

16 


242  INDIAN  TENURE  OP  LAND. 

own  did  he  consider  that  he  yielded  up  or  parted  with, 
and  what  rights  did  he  intend  to  transfer  to  the  pur- 
chaser ?  We  must  remember  that  the  land  in  all  cases  was 
without  improvements,  clearings,  fencings,  wells,  or  build- 
ings. It  was  in  its  wild  state  of  nature.  Curiously  enough, 
the  actual  testing  of  the  transactions  between  the  seller 
and  the  purchaser  in  such  cases  showed  what  the  Indian 
thought  he  was  doing  when  he  sold  his  land.  The  moment 
the  white  man  changed  this  wild  state  of  nature  and  began 
to  make  improvements  upon  it,  the  Indian  regretted  and 
tried  to  retract  his  transfer  of  it.  It  would  seem  that  he 
had  intended  to  allow  the  white  man  a  right  of  joint  occu- 
pancy with  himself,  using  the  facilities  of  the  region  in 
common.  The  Indians  had  no  idea  of  moving  off  to  a  dis- 
tance and  keeping  away  from  the  fields  of  the  white  men. 
Nor  did  they  generally  do  so.  They  came  and  went  as 
before,  loitered  about,  occasionally  got  jobs  of  work  and 
food,  and  they  were  always  accessible.  Nearly  half  a  cen- 
tury after  the  settlement  of  Boston  and  scores  of  towns 
around  it,  the  Apostle  Eliot  found  Indians  enough  to  oc- 
cupy a  dozen  towns  of  their  own  within  thirty  miles. 

It  comes  at  last  to  this.  The  white  man's  uses  of  terri- 
tory are  always  and  everywhere  incompatible  with  the  red 
man's  uses  of  it;  and  the  white  man's  uses  nullify  and 
destroy  the  red  man's.  The  issue,  turned  to  plain  fact,  is 
this, — the  red  man  must  consent  to  make  common  and 
joint  use  of  territory  with  the  habits  of  the  white  man,  or 
he  must  give  way  to  the  white  man.  A  railroad  track,  a 
mail  route,  a  telegraph  wire  passing  through  a  wilderness, 
puts  an  interdict  upon  the  savage  and  claims  the  territory 
for  civilization.  The  comity  of  nations,  independent  and 
jealous  in  their  sovereignty,  does  not  forbid  those  links 
and  fibres  of  transit  and  intercourse.  The  untamed  ocean 
allows  them,  and  the  wild  red  hunter  must  not  prohibit 
them.  Here  is  the  central  turning-point  of  all  the  strug- 
gle between  civilization  and  barbarism.  King  Philip  began 


INDIAN  RIGHTS  NEVER  DEFINED.  243 

with  complaints  of  the  white  man's  fences  at  Plymouth; 
the  savages  on  our  ever-shifting  frontiers  complain  that 
the  white  man's  surveying  parties,  engineers,  and  miners 
frighten  off  his  game  on  plains  and  mountains,  —  and  the 
white  man  tells  the  Indian  that  if  he  cannot  give  up  his 
game  he  must  go  with  it.  All  the  theories  about  the  rights 
of  savage  occupants  of  unimproved  territory,  all  the  prin- 
ciples of  natural  law  argued  out  by  the  most  accomplished 
publicists,  yield  to  the  pressure  of  practical  expediency  and 
of  the  action  of  another  series  of  laws  developed  from 
human  activity.  Most  of  those  who  have  had  to  recog- 
nize and  deal  with  the  undefined  rights  of  the  savages  in 
the  tenure  of  land  have  known  nothing  at  all  of  these 
theories  and  principles  of  natural  law.  Those  who  have 
known  more  or  less  about  them,  and  who  might  have  been 
expected  as  statesmen  or  lawyers  to  have  had  some  re- 
gard for  them,  have  found  them  set  aside  by  such  a  pre- 
vailing force  of  practical  defiances  or  obstructions  of  them 
that  they  have  quietly  allowed  them  to  fall  into  abeyance 
as  inoperative.  No  upright  and  candid  man,  magistrate, 
colonist,  army  officer,  member  of  Congress,  or  simple  pio- 
neer, would  ever  have  stoutly  denied  that  the  Indians  were 
entitled  to  some  sort  of  a  heritage  here;  but  in  all  the 
pages  referring  more  or  less  directly  to  the  subject  which 
have  passed  under  my  eye,  I  have  never  met  with  a  clearly 
defined  and  positive,  however  limited,  statement  of  what 
precisely  that  right  was  and  is.  Nor  would  such  a  state- 
ment even  in  the  form  of  a  legal  definition,  and  allowed  as 
a  precedent,  have  proved  practically  to  carry  authority  with 
it,  as  it  would  in  all  cases  be  held  to  be  subject  to  the 
qualification  that  it  must  in  no  case  permanently  impair 
the  prerogative  of  civilization  over  barbarism. 

According  to  the  natural  features  and  products  of  dif- 
ferent regions,  competent  authorities  have  made  and  war- 
ranted this  estimate, — that  an  extent  of  from  six  thousand 
to  fifty  thousand  acres  (that  is,  more  than  seven  square 


244  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

miles)  is  necessary  for  the  support  in  his  way  of  life  of  a 
single  Indian  with  his  family.  And  the  land  must  be  and 
continue  in  a  perfectly  wild  state  —  of  forest,  meadow, 
swamp,  coverts,  and  streams  —  that  it  may  shelter  and 
subsist  all  the  creatures  which  live  on  each  other,  and  then 
serve  the  Indian.  The  axe  must  never  be  heard  in  those 
deep  forest  recesses ;  the  streams  must  not  be  dammed  at  the 
peril  of  the  fish-ways ;  the  scent  of  humanity  must  not  need- 
lessly taint  the  air;  the  tinkle  of  a  cow-bell  is  a  nuisance, 
and  the  restless  enterprise  of  the  white  man  is  a  fatality. 

No  inapt  illustration  of  the  contrasted  uses  of  territory 
by  the  red  man  and  the  white  man  may  be  suggested  in 
setting  against  each  other  a  countless  herd  of  bellowing  buf- 
faloes, trampling  over  the  succulent  grasses  of  the  prairie, 
and  the  groups  of  domestic  cattle  lowing  in  their  fenced 
pastures  and  barn-yards.  The  pond  which  being  dammed 
to  a  falling  water-power  grinds  the  food  of  families  and 
saws  the  lumber  for  their  dwellings,  is  put  to  better  ser- 
vice so  than  when  it  shelters  the  lodges  even  of  the  in- 
dustrious and  wise  beavers.  It  has  been  said  by  a  United 
States  Indian  Commissioner  that  a  single  Indian  requires 
for  his  support  a  number  of  square  miles  fully  equal  to 
the  number  of  civilized  whites  that  can  subsist  on  one 
square  mile.  The  latest  proposition  and  argument  look- 
ing towards  the  most  humane  and  practical  dealing  with 
the  Indian  question,  recognize  the  very  same  principle 
which  has  asserted  itself  in  reference  to  the  actual  land- 
tenure  of  the  natives.  The  most  hopeful  solution  for  all 
our  difficulties  is  said  to  offer  in  dividing  Indian  lands, 
breaking  up  all  tribal  communes,  and  assigning  to  each 
person  a  severalty  of  possession  to  be  for  a  term  of  years 
inalienable.  At  present  the  United  States  holds  in  Reser- 
vations some  one  hundred  and  fifty-six  millions  of  acres 
for  an  estimated  population  of  two  hundred  and  sixty- 
two  thousand  Indians.  Any  one  who  pleases  may  cast 
the  sum  as  to  the  number  of  acres  which  would  fall  to 


FREE  RANGE  FOR  A  SAVAGE.  245 

each  out  of  this  commonalty.  This  baronial  ownership 
of  territory  it  is  proposed  largely  to  reduce.  The  space 
which  is  by  common  agreement  thought  both  equitable  and 
practically  expedient  to  assign  to  each  Indian  for  fixed 
occupancy  and  improvement  by  his  own  forced  or  volun- 
tary labor,  is  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres, — leaving  the 
remaining  undivided  part  of  each  Reservation  as  a  common 
stock  for  investment  for  the  whole  tribe.  If  this  scheme 
should  take  effect,  with  assured  and  recorded  legal  guaran- 
tees, it  would  prove  the  first  real  recognition  ever  made  of 
land-tenure  for  our  aborigines. 

This  estimate  that  has  been  made  of  the  number  of  acres 
of  wild  forest-space  required  for  the  range  of  each  single  sav- 
age, even  if  allowed  to  include  provision  for  his  squaw  and 
his  pappooses,  would  not  even  then  in  all  portions  of  the 
continent  suffice  for  the  maintenance  of  those  dependent 
in  a  wasteful  way  upon  it,  for  all  the  seasons  of  the  year. 
In  most  parts  of  this  country  the  Indians  have  always  been 
compelled  or  prompted  to  lead  a  more  or  less  nomadic  life. 
When  they  are  induced  to  move  from  one  region  where 
game  has  become  scarce  in  order  to  seek  it  in  another,  they 
must  be  able  to  find  such  another  equally  wild  region  in  re- 
serve for  them.  The  deer,  the  elk,  the  moose,  the  bear,  and 
many  small  animals  were  their  favorite  food.  The  wolf  and 
the  cougar  were  oftener  let  alone  than  molested.  Maize 
was  necessarily  relied  upon  by  natives  not  living  within  the 
range  of  the  buffalo,  for  winter's  use,  and  as  a  very  small 
store  of  it  was  easily  carried  on  their  tramps.  It  was  at 
best  but  dry  and  hard  though  nutritious  food.  Parched 
and  pounded,  a  handful  of  grains  of  it  mixed  with  water, 
either  with  or  without  the  help  of  further  cooking,  would, 
as  we  have  noticed,  sustain  an  Indian  for  a  long  journey. 
There  is  a  favorite  dish  prepared  by  old-fashioned  New 
England  households,  of  boiled  green  corn  and  beans,  known 
by  the  name  of  "  Succotash  " l  as  coming  to  us  from  the 

1  From  the  Narragansett  language. 


246  INDIAN   TENURE   OF   LAND. 

Indians.  But  we  should  not  much  relish  a  dish  which  a 
squaw  might  have  cooked  for  us  under  that  name ;  we 
should  have  missed  the  butter  and  the  salt,  of  which  the 
Indians  knew  nothing.  Fish  too,  caught  in  a  rude  way 
from  full  waters,  was  a  resource  at  some  seasons. 

We  must  remember,  too,  that  the  Indians  used  the  fur- 
bearing  animals  only  for  their  own  moderate  needs,  and 
did  not  require  any  such  number  of  them  as  would  threaten 
their  extermination.  The  rapacity  and  commercial  spirit 
of  the  Europeans  at  once  turned  the  skins  of  the  bear,  the 
deer,  the  beaver,  the  fox,  the  marten,  the  otter,  and  the 
buffalo  into  articles  coveted  for  traffic.  From  the  first 
colonization  a  wasting  raid  has  been  made  upon  these  ani- 
mals by  the  whites,  utterly  exhausting  the  near  supply,  and 
compelling  the  Indians — for  their  own  needs  and  for  bar- 
ter sale — to  move  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  wilderness. 
Much  of  their  land  which  the  whites  have  occupied  had 
been  abandoned  by  the  Indians,  and  much  more  has  been 
readily  sold  by  them  as  useless  for  their  purposes.  Indeed 
soil,  forest,  valley,  and  meadow  and  stream,  represent  quite 
different  capacities  and  values  to  the  red  man  and  the 
white  man.  And  if  no  violent  dealing  were  spent  on  the 
Indians,  the  steady  wasting  of  their  old  game  would  put  a 
period  to  their  way  of  life. 

We  have  also  to  take  into  account  the  fact,  that  vastly 
the  larger  portion  of  the  Indians  now  on  the  continent,  even 
the  wildest  of  them,  have  become,  in  different  degrees,  de- 
pendent upon  help  and  resources  for  subsistence  furnished 
to  them  by  the  whites.  I  have  already  made  mention  of  the 
fact,  that,  among  the  vast  variety  and  divergency  of  views 
which  have  found  expression  concerning  the  whole  rela- 
tions between  the  Europeans  and  the  Indians  on  our  north- 
ern continent,  the  bold  opinion  has  been  advanced  that  the 
savages  have  on  the  whole  found  a  balance  of  advantages 
and  benefits  from  our  intercourse  with  them.  If  there  is 
a  shadow  of  truth  to  warrant  that  eccentric  assertion  as 


GOVERNMENT   SUPPLIES   TO   INDIANS.  247 

applicable  in  the  past,  there  is  reason  for  believing  that  it 
has  much  to  verify  it  in  these  last  years.  The  present  gene- 
ration of  savages  profit  largely  either  from  the  remorse,  or 
from  the  apprehensions,  or  from  the  generosity  of  our  peo- 
ple as  expressed  by  the  Government.  While  in  our  largest 
cities  are  crowded  hordes  of  wretched,  houseless  beggars, 
suffering  all  the  direful  miseries  of  penury,  cold,  naked- 
ness, and  disease,  the  Indians  who  are  pensioners  of  our 
Government  have  transported  to  their  fastnesses,  by  most 
costly  modes  of  carriage  and  distribution,  a  marvellous 
variety  of  necessities  and  even  of  luxuries.  Droves  of 
beef  on  the  hoof,  with  whole  warehouses  of  clothing  emp- 
tied of  materials  for  their  apparel,  minister  to  prime  neces- 
sities. But  this  is  by  no  means  all:  any  one  who  will 
turn  over  the  annual  report  of  the  United  States  Indian 
Commission  will  find  in  it  a  most  elaborate  table,  covering 
(for  1881)  one  hundred  and  sixteen  closely  printed  pages, 
headed  "  Proposals  received  and  Contracts  awarded  for 
Supplies  for  Indian  Service."  On  reading  over  that  table, 
one  will  have  really  a  new  and  grateful  impression  of  the 
resources,  appliances,  ingenuities,  and  ministrations  of  civ- 
ilization for  human  life.  All  the  varieties  of  food,  of  house- 
hold and  farming,  mechanical  and  artistic,  tools,  of  stuffs 
and  garments,  of  groceries  and  furniture,  of  iron,  tin,  glass, 
and  crockery  ware,  —  fill  the  specifications  in  the  tables. 
The  eye  falls  with  pleasure  upon  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  pounds  of  soap,  and  the  thousands  of  combs,  which  may 
be  put  to  excellent  use.  Cosmetics  hold  a  large  space. 
The  variety  of  surgical  instruments  and  mechanical  medi- 
cal devices  is  an  amazing  one.  The  elaborate  list  of  drugs 
and  medicines  would  seem  to  indicate  that  a  system  of 
light  practice  does  not  prevail  among  the  natives.  To- 
bacco is  furnished  most  lavishly.  When  it  is  considered 
that  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  the  articles  on  these  tables 
were  never  used  by  or  even  known  to  the  Indians  before 
their  intercourse  with  the  whites ;  and  when  we  also  take 


248  INDIAN   TENURE   OF  LAND. 

into  view  the  fact  that  having  once  received  them  and 
turned  them  to  account  they  ever  after  come  to  depend 
upon  them,  clamoring  in  impatience  for  the  supply,  —  we 
may  estimate  the  service  of  the  white  man  to  the  Indian. 
Nor  must  the  statement  be  omitted  that  last  year,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Government  spent  more  than  a  million  of  dol- 
lars for  Indians  not  in  reservations,  nor  under  treaty  with 
it.  These  facts,  anticipatory  of  later  discussions,  are  no- 
ticed here  as  having  a  bearing  upon  the  virtual  right  of  the 
Indian  tenure  of  land,  as  recognized  by  the  favors  extended 
by  the  whites. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  supposed  that  any  humane  or  ideal 
pleader  for  the  rights  of  the  red  man  would  affirm  that  his 
heritage  of  this  whole  continent,  when  first  visited  by  white 
men,  should  have  been  regarded  and  respected  as  inalien- 
ably belonging  to  him  for  all  time  to  come,  not  to  be 
encroached  upon  or  shared  with  those  who  could  make  a 
better  use  of  it.  It  can  hardly  be  conceived  that  regions 
of  a  globe  of  very  moderate  size,  —  seemingly  the  only  orb 
in  the  universe  available  for  the  subsistence,  expansion, 
and  development  of  the  human  race,  or  at  least  the  only 
one  which  we  at  present  can  occupy,  —  instead  of  being 
turned  to  account  by  millions  of  happy  civilized  beings, 
should  be  held  for  all  time  as  reserved  to  be  coursed  over 
by  a  few  thousand  savages.  Is  it  reasonable  to  maintain 
that  one  or  several  annual  visits  and  roamings  over  a  vast 
extent  of  wild  territory — lakes  and  forests — by  a  group  or 
a  tribe  of  hunters  conferred  ownership,  superiority,  or  even 
priority  of  claim  to  it?  Why,  even  the  pre-emptive  right, 
the  first  claim  to  the  right,  of  a  purchaser  of  soil  under  our 
Government,  is  secured  only  by  betterments  and  improve- 
ments on  and  below  its  surface.  The  formality  and  rigid- 
ness  of  legal  exactions  by  which  civilized  peoples  regulate 
the  ownership  and  transmission  of  titles  to  land,  is  of  itself 
an  indication,  and  to  some  extent  a  justification,  of  the  ex- 
ceedingly slender  claim  of  tenure  which  they  would  allow 


INDIAN  EIGHTS  AS  A  RACE.  249 

to  the  aborigines.  These  monarchs  of  all  they  surveyed 
probably  never  connected  an  idea  of  proprietorship  on  their 
part  of  the  scenes  over  which  they  roamed,  any  more  than 
does  the  fisherman  on  the  banks  or  shoals  of  the  sea,  or 
one  who  daily  enjoys  the  view  of  the  changing  aspects  of 
the  horizon  or  the  sky,  associate  with  it  any  claim  of  his 
own  beyond  the  right  of  transient  use.  Private  property 
among  the  Indians  was  scant  and  simple,  confined  individ- 
ually to  each  one's  apparel  and  implements.  Nor  as  a 
tribe  do  the  members  in  fellowship  appear  to  have  been 
prompted,  at  least  before  the  coming  of  the  whites,  to 
bound  any  region  between  themselves  and  their  neighbors 
to  be  especially  and  jealously  guarded  from  intrusion.  The 
recognition  of  an  enemy  in  wilderness  travel  was  simply  as 
he  belonged  to  a  hostile  tribe,  not  as  one  intruding  upon 
domains  where  he  had  no  rights.  The  first  example  of 
anything  like  jealousy  in  the  assertion  of  territorial  limits 
among  the  Indians  themselves  was  when,  in  the  rivalries 
of  English,  Dutch,  and  French  traders  for  traffic  with  tribes 
at  enmity  with  each  other,  the  right  of  way  over  the  trails 
and  portages  of  one  or  another  band  was  disputed.  The 
white  men  would  allege  that  forest  and  stream  were  as  free 
for  common  highways  as  were  the  ferce  naturce  found  upon 
them  by  roving  hunters. 

Yet  if  we  thus  question  the  right  of  any  one  tribe  or  na- 
tion of  the  aborigines  to  anything  of  such  positive  force  as 
a  long-inherited  claim  in  connection  with  the  actual  occu- 
pancy of  any  particular  territory,  we  do  not  then  dispose 
of  the  prior  question  as  to  the  tenure  by  which  human 
beings  held  this  continent  before  the  coming  of  the  white 
man.  The  race  of  red  men,  taken  as  a  whole,  was  here ; 
and  even  if  local  tribes  held  one  or  another  portion  of  the 
soil  only  temporarily  and  by  conquest,  liable  at  any  time  to 
be  displaced,  yet  the  race,  as  a  race,  certainly  had  some 
common  and  comprehensive  right  to  an  abiding  place. 
This  right  the  white  man  has  always  professed  to  respect. 


250  INDIAN  TENUKE   OF  LAND. 

We  may  even  say  positively  that  the  Europeans,  from  the 
first  down  to  the  present  day,  have  intended  to  respect  this 
general  right  of  the  aborigines  to  exist  on  some  portion  of 
this  continent,  and  to  be  allowed  to  live  after  their  own 
fashion  as  nomads  or  hunters.  Provision  has  indeed  been 
made  by  a  long  series  of  enactments  and  measures  on  the 
part  of  our  Government  for  securing  these  rights  to  the 
Indians.  Before  the  enormous  growth  of  our  own  popula- 
tion by  natural  increase  and  colonization  and  immigration, 
the  problem  seemed  to  be  one  very  easily  disposed  of.  It 
being  taken  for  granted  that  there  was  a  limitless  expanse 
to  our  territory,  and  that  one  region  was  as  suitable  and 
acceptable  as  another  to  an  Indian,  provided  it  were  wild 
forest-land  where  he  could  hunt  and  fish,  there  seemed  to 
be  no  particular  hardship  in  compelling  the  savages  dis- 
placed at  one  point  to  move  on  farther  off.  It  was  but  add- 
ing a  new  inducement  to  pursue  a  course  which  their  own 
habits  of  life,  when  game  became  scarce  or  they  were  in 
dread  of  hostile  neighbor-tribes,  led  them  voluntarily  to 
adopt,  of  roving  to  new  hunting-grounds.  But  as  soon  as 
the  seaboard  was  deserted  by  new  colonists,  and  the  fron- 
tier settlers  pushed  farther  and  farther  inland,  the  savages 
who  had  taken  refuge  in  successive  beltings  of  the  conti- 
nent had  to  begin  the  series  of  removals  which  have  con- 
tinued in  steadily  increasing  rapidity  to  our  own  times. 
We  find  at  last  that  there  is  a  limit  to  this  process  of  push- 
ing the  savages  into  new  Western  domains.  We  have 
crowded  the  tribes  together,  and  they  are  now,  like  the 
deer  or  buffalo  which  they  used  to  encircle  and  drive  into 
their  traps  and  pounds,  circumscribed  by  the  white  men. 

There  is  one  significant  phrase  used  in  the  opening  of 
this  chapter,  which  we  meet  daily  in  our  papers,  that  sums 
up  the  whole  story  and  the  whole  situation.  It  is  that  by 
which  our  Government  documents  describe  our  almost 
boundless  realm  as  "  the  public  lands,"  or  "  the  public 
domain."  Yes;  we  have  claimed — in  one  sense  we  have 


GRADUAL  ADVANCE  OF  EUROPEANS.         251 

got — the  whole.  And  what  of  the  former  owners?  If  we 
look  at  certain  Government  maps  we  see  that  States  and 
Territories  are  parcelled  out  over  this  magnificent  realm 
like  the  squares  in  a  vast  checker-board.  Among  these 
partitions,  shown  in  colors,  we  may  count  some  hundred 
and  thirty  patches,  large  or  small,  called  Reservations. 
Each  of  these  marks  —  in  homely  language,  which  is  best 
for  it  —  a  scrape  into  which  our  Government  has  got  itself 
by  making  a  bargain  about  it  which  it  cannot  keep,  and 
does  not  mean  to  keep.  These  were  certainly,  in  letter 
and  form,  covenants  which  positively  recognized  the  terri- 
torial rights  of  savages ;  and  the  spirit  in  which  they 
were  entered  into  was  certainly,  in  some  cases,  sincere  and 
fair.  It  has  been  found  inexpedient  or  impracticable  to 
keep  them.  This,  however,  is  a  subject  for  later  pages  of 
this  volume  ;  passing  reference  to  it  comes  here,  as  the 
vacillation  and  so-called  perfidious  course  of  policy  of  our 
Government  in  regard  to  these  covenants  is  only  another 
evidence  of  an  original  distrust  or  denial  of  any  proprietary 
rights  of  the  savages. 

It  was,  of  course,  only  gradually  that  our  aboriginal 
people  came  to  realize  the  full  meaning  of  the  struggle 
which  they  would  have  to  maintain  against  the  white  men. 
At  first  they  were  wholly  ignorant  of  the  real  purposes  of 
the  European  colonists.  The  early  companies  of  them  were 
poor  and  few ;  they  might  have  touched  and  landed  here 
by  accident,  with  no  intention  of  remaining;  they  were 
often  objects  of  pity,  and  needed  help ;  then  they  appeared 
to  be  transient  traffickers,  seeking  an  exchange  of  com- 
modities—  fish  and  peltry  —  for  a  few  implements  and 
trinkets.  These  early  days  of  the  white  man's  weakness 
and  poverty  have  been  ever  since  referred  to  with  pathetic 
pleading  and  reproachful  remonstrance  in  the  forest  elo- 
quence of  Indian  orators  at  councils,  since  we  have  become 
so  strong  and  encroaching.  Over  and  over  again  have 
these  wild  spokesmen  by  council  fires,  in  making  treaties 


252  INDIAN  TENURE  OF  LAND. 

with  the  grasping  and  arrogant  white  men, — sometimes  in 
taunts,  sometimes  in  dignified  appeals,  —  reminded  their 
conquerors  of  our  early  days  of  weakness  and  poverty.  So 
far  as  the  Indian  could  take  into  his  mind  an  idea  of  what  to 
the  white  man  is  policy,  —  a  scheme  with  an  ultimate  object 
in  view,  at  first  concealed,  and  exposing  its  aim  or  tendency 
only  as  it  could  be  safely  developed,  stage  by  stage,  —  he 
came  to  the  conviction  that  the  Europeans  had  from  the 
first  been  practising  guile  towards  him.  Coming  as  tran- 
sient visitors  in  ships  still  at  their  anchorages,  which  might 
be  expected  to  return  whence  they  came,  carrying  back 
their  companies  with  such  freight  as  they  might  gather, 
the  Indians  found  that  these  companies  left  some  of  their 
number  on  shore  to  fortify  or  to  plant,  while  the  vessels 
returned  merely  to  bring  reinforcements.  All  the  facts  in- 
volved in  permanent  colonization  presented  themselves  to 
the  Indians  gradually.  It  must  have  been  very  long  before 
they  reached  any  adequate  conception  that  the  feeble  be- 
ginnings of  intercourse  would  lead  on  to  a  struggle  and 
rivalry  that  would  result  in  their  close  and  final  conflict 
for  any  heritage  on  their  old  domains.  The  Indians,  taken 
together  as  a  race,  might  well  have  such  a  knowledge  of 
the  boundlessness  of  the  continent  as  to  be  well  aware  that 
there  was  room  enough  for  any  moderate  number  of  the 
foreigners  without  being  crowded  themselves.  The  new- 
comers at  first  confined  their  residences,  though  not  their 
roamings,  to  the  sea-coast,  or  to  the  large  rivers  emptying 
into  ocean  bays.  Here  they  were  comparatively  harmless, 
and  seemed  to  be  simply  traffickers,  not  hunters,  nor  likely 
to  penetrate  deeply  into  the  interior  forests. 

But  it  could  not  have  been  very  long  before  some  of  the 
most  gifted,  far-sighted,  and  after  their  fashion  patriotic 
of  the  forest  chieftains  —  Powhatan  and  his  son,  and  King 
Philip,  and  afterwards  Pontiac,  for  instance  —  took  in  the 
aspect  of  the  future  for  their  race,  as  doomed  to  yield 
their  inheritance  if  the  white  man  strengthened  himself  on 


RAPID  OCCUPATION  BY  EUROPEANS.         253 

the  soil.  Though  we  cannot  suppose  that  the  Indian  tribes 
bordering  on  the  whole  Atlantic  seaboard  maintained  such 
close  communication  with  each  other  as  to  be  well  informed 
about  what  was  transpiring  at  widely  separated  points  on 
the  coast  at  the  time  of  most  rapid  colonization,  yet  they 
had  some  common  knowledge  on  the  subject.  They  found 
the  Europeans  rushing  hitherward  in  swarms,  evidently 
with  a  purpose  of  remaining,  of  taking  possession  of  the 
soil,  and  extending  their  settlements.  The  Indians  were 
amazed  and  bewildered  by  the  spectacle.  They  came  to 
think  that  for  some  reason  unknown  to  them  the  people 
from  another  world  were  all  coming  hither  and  emptying 
themselves  on  this  continent.  Nor  did  it  relieve  their 
wonder  when  they  found  that  the  new  comers  represented 
rival  and  hostile  parties  like  their  own  tribes,  fighting 
each  other,  and  transferring  Old  World  quarrels  to  this 
soil. 

While  the  natives  thus  came  to  realize  the  ultimate  pur- 
pose of  the  whites,  and  to  realize  too  what  destiny  it  would 
involve  for  them,  the  Europeans  on  their  part  had  strength- 
ened themselves  for  each  successive  stage  of  conflict  which 
the  struggle  would  encounter.  As  the  first  objects  of  their 
enterprise,  invasion,  and  exploration  —  the  precious  metals 
and  peltry — were  abandoned  or  subordinated,  new  aims 
and  attractions  took  their  place.  Commerce  on  the  high 
seas,  the  fisheries,  freedom  of  range  for  those  who  had  been 
cramped  in  the  Old  World,  the  privilege  of  trying  theories 
of  government  and  of  religion  denied  them  in  Europe,  and 
even  the  opportunities  for  obtaining  abundant  subsistence 
though  at  the  cost  of  healthful  toil,  began  in  the  first  half 
century  of  real  colonization  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  stu- 
pendous development  of  the  continent  and  for  making  it 
the  harborage  of  emigrating  Europe.  If  the  aborigines 
could  ever  have  withstood  this  process,  or  in  any  way  modi- 
fied the  fate  which  it  would  inevitably  involve  for  them,  it 
could  have  been  only  in  its  very  earliest  stages.  Even  then 


254  INDIAN   TENUEE   OF  LAND. 

anything  that  they  could  have  done  would  have  required  a 
combination  among  them  such  as,  indeed,  has  after  a  sort 
presented  itself  in  successive  critical  struggles,  but  for 
which  all  the  needful  conditions  failed.  The  whole  issue 
is  summed  up  in  the  fact  that  the  natives  were  barbarians, 
and  as  such  had  in  the  view  of  Europeans  a  very  dubious 
tenancy  on  the  continent. 

It  has  been  in  the  treaty  negotiations  with  the  Indian 
tribes  by  the  United  States,  extending  over  nearly  a  cen- 
tury, that  the  question  as  to  the  tenure  and  title  of  the  soil 
held  by  them  has  come  to  be  of  prime  consequence.  The 
question  has  never  been  judicially  pronounced  upon  in  any 
conclusive  and  comprehensive  decision;  nevertheless,  it 
has  been  practically  decided  over  and  over  again  in  the 
course  and  mode  of  dealing  with  it  by  our  Government. 
In  this  as  in  all  our  other  relations  and  negotiations  with 
the  red  men  our  assumptions,  our  theories,  and  our  acts  have 
been  experimental,  inconstant,  vacillating,  and  inconsistent. 
Our  treaties  have  frankly  and  emphatically  recognized  some 
territorial  rights  of  the  natives ;  our  action  under  these 
treaties  indicates  that  we  regard  the  claims  of  the  natives 
as  absurd,  trivial,  and  groundless.  Did  we  make  a  mistake 
from  the  start,  or  have  we  been  perfidious  ?  In  our  fright 
under  Indian  border- warfare,  our  readiness  to  protect  our 
frontier  settlers,  to  encourage  our  mining  prospectors,  and 
to  secure  a  passage  for  our  Pacific  railroads,  we  have  ad- 
mitted that  the  Indians,  as  foreigners  and  independent 
proprietors,  had  territorial  rights  which  we  could  reduce 
or  extinguish  only  by  a  bargain,  completed  at  once  by  pay 
ment  or  suspended  on  annuities.  But  all  the  while  our 
subsequent  course  under  our  own  treaties  has  proved  that 
we  never  really  believed  that  nomadic  hordes,  roaming 
over  thousands  of  miles  of  wild  land,  could  possibly  acquire 
any  such  title  to  it  as  is  alone  recognized  by  civilized  people. 
When  an  individual  proprietor  of  land  in  a  well-organized 
community  has  his  rights  to  possession  brought  under  ques- 


CONVEYANCES  BY  INDIAN  CHIEFS.  255 

tion  or  peril,  he  has  but  to  invoke  the  aid  of  the  law,  and 
if  need  be  he  will  have  the  active  help  of  the  whole  com- 
munity in  which  he  lives  to  maintain  those  rights.  Here, 
in  this  case,  a  personal  interest,  legal  sanctions,  and  a  sup- 
port by  the  sympathy  of  neighbors  and  fellow-citizens,  all 
unite  to  maintain  the  rights  of  each  single  proprietor  of 
land.  The  Indian  never  asserted  any  rights  strictly  as  a 
person,  an  individual,  to  a  single  foot  of  territory  on  this 
continent,  not  even  to  that  on  which  he  planted  his  lodge  ; 
the  law  of  the  white  man  has  made  but  a  faint,  shadowy, 
and  vacillating  recognition  of  any  such  rights  of  an  indi- 
vidual Indian.  Thus,  instead  of  the  three  securities  and 
appliances  which  the  land-owner  in  a  civilized  community 
enjoys,  the  Indian  has  but  one ;  namely,  such  as  he  may 
find  in  the  sympathy  and  helpful  engagement  of  his  tribe 
to  vindicate  a  claim  common  to  all  its  members.  Hence 
the  United  States  Government  in  its  treaties  with  the  na- 
tives for  the  cession  of  territory  has  never  made  the  slight- 
est recognition  of  any  individual  proprietary  rights  among 
them ;  it  has  always  dealt  with  them  as  tribes,  often  with 
a  very  loose  estimate  of  their  numbers,  —  as  the  proprietors 
of  some  of  the  great  Western  ranches  sell  out  their  cattle 
as  stock,  in  the  gross,  without  an  inventory  by  count. 
Thus  the  Government  perpetuates  the  theory  that  there 
are  no  individual  rights  among  the  Indians;  they  have 
but  the  same  claims  to  a  common  pasturage  as  a  herd  of 
cattle,  or  of  buffalo,  when  they  shift  their  range. 

If  so  many  other  more  immediately  pressing  perplexities 
had  not  come  up  to  be  met  by  our  Government  as  the  con- 
sequences of  its  loose  policy  in  treaties  with  the  Indians, 
the  very  searching  question  would  have  been  sure  to  have 
presented  itself  as  to  the  authority  or  right  which  two  or 
three  Indian  chiefs,  in  council  with  officers  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, have  to  deed  away  an  extent  of  territory,  thus 
defrauding  their  own  posterity  of  a  heritage.  The  Govern- 
ment has  thus  allowed  that  the  Indian  title  is  sufficiently 


256  INDIAN  TENURE  OF  LAND. 

defined  to  admit  of  being  legally  transferred ;  and  the 
Indians  have  put  the  estimate  of  their  rights  as  a  race  at  a 
very  low  and  dubious  condition  of  tenure. 

Among  the  various  theories  and  opinions  as  to  the  re- 
lations between  the  red  and  the  white  men  on  the  present 
territory  of  the  United  States,  we  recognized  in  the  opening 
of  this  chapter  that  one  which  perhaps  a  majority  of  per- 
sons on  hearing  it  stated  would  flout  as  mean  and  abomina- 
ble, while  the  rest  would  grant  that  it  is  at  best  but  specious 
and  plausible.  Yet  it  has  had  its  advocates.  This  theory 
proceeds  upon  what  are  said  to  be  admitted  principles  un- 
der the  law  of  nations  and  the  usages  which  apply  to  rights 
of  conquest  and  accession  to  territory  that  has  changed 
sovereigns.  Spain,  France,  and  England  once  claimed  and 
substantially  had  possession  of  the  whole  northern  part  of 
this  continent,  and  also  claimed  sovereignty  over  its  inhab- 
itants. We  are  not,  it  is  said,  to  inquire  too  curiously 
about  the  method  and  process,  nor  even  the  justice  and 
effect,  of  the  way  in  which  this  mastery  was  obtained  :  we 
are  to  regard  only  the  fact.  Now,  with  the  exception  of 
those  portions  of  the  territory  which  we  have  purchased, 
with  all  the  claimed  rights  from  France  and  Spain,  we  con- 
quered this  country  from  Great  Britain.  She  claimed  to 
own  the  territory,  and  that  the  people  on  it,  red  and  white, 
were  her  subjects.  We  have  sprung  into  being  upon  it,  a 
new  and  independent  nation ;  and  the  same  struggle  which 
freed  us  from  the  mother  country  made  us  owners  of  the 
territory  and  masters  of  all  the  natives  on  it  whom  Great 
Britain  regarded  as  a  subject  race.  Great  Britain  set  us 
an  example  for  our  own  following  as  a  nation,  in  claiming 
this  incidental  right  of  conquest.  At  the  close  of  the  long 
and  savage  conflict  which  we  call  the  French  and  Indian 
War,  —  and  which  led  to  the  cession  of  Canada  and  ex- 
tinguished French  occupation  here,  except  in  Louisiana,  — 
Great  Britain  acted  upon  the  assumption  that  its  conquest 
covered  that  of  all  the  Indians  who  had  been  the  helpful 


INCONSISTENT  COURSE  OF  OUR  GOVERNMENT.  257 

and  effective  allies  of  the  French,  and  all  their  territory  be- 
sides. It  was  in  asserting  that  claim  and  in  the  attempt 
to  take  possession  of  such  territory  that  England  provoked 
one  of  the  most  ferocious  and  tragic  of  the  episodes  in 
our  Indian  warfare,  known  as  the  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac. 
Next,  she  engaged  the  aid  of  Indian  allies  against  us  in  our 
War  of  Independence,  making  a  contract  with  them  for 
their  services,  the  terms  of  which  she  violated.  Great 
Britain  appears  again  on  the  field  against  us,  acting  through 
her  governor  and  agents  in  Canada,  and  such  able  Indian 
conspirators  as  the  Mohawk  chief  Brant  and  Little  Turtle. 
Her  scheme  then  was,  while  holding  the  Northern  and  Wes- 
tern "  posts,"  which  she  had  agreed  to  give  up  to  us,  to 
prompt  and  aid  the  Indians  west  and  north  of  the  Ohio  to 
the  conspiracy,  on  the  ground  that  the  territory  which  she 
had  ceded  to  us  by  treaty  did  not  include  that  into  which 
our  pioneers  began  to  rush  on  the  conclusion  of  peace.  The 
immense  cost  which  this  renewed  Indian  war  involved  to 
our  then  merely  confederated  government, — impoverished, 
and  with  distracted  councils, — and  the  barbarities  of  slaugh- 
ter and  burnings  and  desolation  which  it  involved  for  the 
settlers,  might  well  have  persuaded  the  generation  of  that 
day  that  the  British  and  the  Indians  constituted  but  one 
common  enemy  for  us,  and  that  our  victory  included  the 
conquest  of  the  territory  over  which  the  direful  struggle 
extended.  At  any  rate,  sucji  is  our  title  to  that  territory 
held  according  to  the  allowed  principles  of  natural  and 
international  law. 

So  we  close  our  review  of  the  subject  of  the  Indian  ten- 
ure of  land  on  this  continent  as  recognized  and  dealt  with 
by  Europeans.  There  has  been  no  harmony  or  consistency 
either  of  opinion  or  action  on  the  subject.  According  to 
that  law  of  honesty  and  economy  which  teaches  us  that  the 
righting  of  a  wrong,  when  that  is  even  possible,  involves 
much  heavier  costs  than  would  have  been  requisite  to 
avoid  it,  our  Government  both  in  its  war  policy  and  its 

17 


258  INDIAN  TENURE   OP  LAND. 

peace  policy  has  expended  sums  of  money  which  would 
over  and  over  again  have  sufficed  to  extinguish  the  Indian 
title  by  the  strictest  terms  of  a  bargain.  Nor  is  this  all : 
our  existing  obligations  in  trust  funds,  annuities,  pensions, 
supplies,  and  agencies  exceed  in  amount  the  original  prop- 
erty value  of  what  we  hold  through  them. 


CHAPTER  Y. 

THE  FRENCH   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

THE  theme  of  this  chapter  has  been  so  appropriated, 
indeed  so  richly  and  even  exhaustively  treated,  by  the 
most  eminent  and  gifted  of  American  writers  of  American 
history,  that  only  the  necessary  recognition  of  it  in  its 
place  in  this  volume  could  require  a  reference  to  it.  Mr. 
Francis  Parkman  was  favored  in  finding  waiting  for  his 
taste  and  genius,  for  his  attraction  to  it  before  reaching 
early  manhood,  and  for  his  especial  qualities  for  dealing 
with  it,  a  rich  and  profoundly  interesting  subject  for  the 
pen  of  the  scholar  and  historian.  For  more  than  thirty- 
five  years  he  has  given  to  it  deep  and  quiet  thought  for 
apprehending  its  full  significance ;  wide  travel  and  explo- 
ration of  the  scenes  of  the  great  drama ;  the  most  keen, 
extended,  and  thorough  research  for  documents  and  maps 
in  print  or  manuscript  in  this  country  and  in  Europe,  in 
public  archives  and  in  private  cabinets  ;  a  skilled  inquisi- 
tion for  any  hidden  and  secret  sources  of  information,  and 
a  most  comprehensive  range  of  reading  and  study  in  every 
field  of  intellectual  work  which  would  complete  his  mental 
furnishing  for  his  subject.  His  pen  has  wrought  in  a  style 
which  in  vigor,  vivacity,  richness,  and  marvellous  adapta- 
tion to  the  scenery,  the  incidents,  and  the  persons  with 
which  he  has  to  deal,  so  engages  the  interest,  sympathy, 
and  understanding  of  his  readers  as  to  make  them  his  com- 
panions along  his  way.  He  has  a  skill  in  woodcraft,  in  the 
science  of  the  forest,  in  describing  scenery  and  life,  travel 


260          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

and  sojourn,  in  the  vast  wilderness,  —  on  lake,  river,  and 
cataract,  —  and  in  the  interpretation  and  description  of  In- 
dian character,  habits,  and  experience,  which  have  never 
before  left  such  marks  in  our  literature  of  Nature  and  bar- 
barism. And  with  equal  facility  he  can  pass  from  these 
wild  scenes  and  men  to  interpret  for  us  the  passions  and 
the  intrigues,  the  schemes  and  the  rivalries,  of  courtiers 
and  politicians,  the  lofty  motives  of  heroic  and  dauntless 
spirits  who  on  equally  "unknown  seas  and  lands  could  seek 
glory  and  empire  for  their  monarch  without  other  ambition 
for  themselves ;  and  also  to  penetrate  to  the  deep  workings 
of  spiritual  exaltation  which  moved  the  soldiers  of  the 
Company  of  Jesus,  of  gentle  nurture  and  of  scholarly  train- 
ing, in  utter  self-abnegation  to  bury  themselves  in  the 
woods  that  they  might  circumvent  the  Enemy  of  souls  in 
his  sweeping  claim  for  the  hordes  of  heathenism. 

The  fruits  of  Mr.  Parkman's  labors  appear  at  present  — 
as  they  are  happily  not  closed  —  in  a  series  of  seven  vol- 
umes, distinct  in  subordinate  titles,  but  comprehensive  of 
one  vast  subject,  dramatic  and  tragic  in  its  sweep  of  des- 
tiny, but  with  brilliant,  thrilling,  romantic,  and  even  light- 
some episodes  to  break  its  sombreness  of  rehearsal.  The 
meditation  and  the  toil,  the  trained  judgment  and  the  con- 
science which  have  gone  into  those  volumes  that  they  might 
be  critically  faithful  in  their  narrations,  just  to  the  patrons 
and  actors  in  their  enterprises,  and  attractive  and  instruc- 
tive to  the  readers,  must  be  left  to  the  estimate  of  appreci- 
ative and  grateful  students. 

Mr.  Parkman's  full  theme  extends  through  just  two  cen- 
turies of  time,  and  relates  to  historical  incidents  covering 
the  whole  of  this  northern  continent  between  Florida  and 
Canada.  The  whole  region,  when  he  takes  up  the  story, 
was  called,  by  the  Spanish  discoverers  and  claimants  under 
monarch  and  pope,  New  Spain,  or  Spanish  Florida.  Mr. 
Parkman  deals  with  the  region  as  New  France.  His  stint 
of  task  and  purpose  was  to  rehearse  in  its  completeness 


MB.  PARKMAN'S  WORKS  ON  NEW  FRANCE.  261 

and  in  its  episodes  the  enterprise  and  aim  of  Frenchmen — 
by  their  own  private  resources,  the  help  of  noble  and  de- 
vout patrons,  men  and  women,  and  the  sanction  of  mon- 
archs  guided  by  prime  ministers,  through  patents  and  vast 
territorial  grants  and  vice-royal  privileges  —  to  lay  in  the 
New  World  the  foundations  of  a  colonial  empire.  Mr.  Park- 
man  grasps  his  whole  theme  with  a  comprehensive  hold  of 
its  contents  necessarily  exceeding  that  of  Mr.  Irving  as  the 
biographer  of  Columbus  and  his  successors  in  the  service  of 
Spain,  and  in  their  exploring  and  ravaging  a  section  of  the 
New  World.  The  aim  of  the  French  was  a  loftier  and  in 
some  sense  a  nobler  one  than  that  of  the  Spaniard.  It  did 
not,  in  its  objects  or  its  intended  or  absolutely  necessary 
methods,  involve  oppression  or  any  form  of  injury,  still  less 
of  exterminating  warfare,  against  the  natives.  It  might 
have  been  pursued  and  accomplished  in  the  interests  of 
peace,  of  profitable  commerce  and  of  trade,  with  a  more 
hopeful  progress  in  that  process  of  Christianizing  the  sava- 
ges which  satisfied  the  religious  standard  of  those  who  un- 
dertook it.  Mr.  Parkman  has  to  present  to  us,  in  portrait- 
ure and  in  conspicuous  achievement,  high-souled  men  with 
lofty  aims,  —  ardent,  heroic,  patient  in  all  buffetings  with 
thwarting  foes  and  overwhelming  disasters,  and  sinking  all 
self-ends  to  secure  an  enviable  prize  for  their  monarch  and 
their  country ;  though  not  all  of  his  characters  exhibit  these 
high  traits,  free  of  meannesses.  He  brings  before  us  on 
his  animated  and  picturesque  pages  a  succession  of  mari- 
ners whose  prowess  and  self-reliance  made  them  dauntless 
over  unknown  seas,  through  fog-banks,  shoals,  icebergs, 
and  rocky  barriers  of  granite  harbors ;  explorers  who 
learned  to  thread  their  way  through  forests,  rivers,  lakes, 
and  cataracts,  for  thousands  of  miles,  stripped  of  all  their 
wonted  resources  as  civilized  men,  and  cast  upon  their 
quick  skill  to  become  adepts  in  those  of  the  woods ;  vice- 
roys, governors,  magistrates,  with  conflicting  commissions 
and  bitter  rivalries  fomenting  jealousies  and  discord ;  and 


262          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

priests  whose  lives  and  experiences  were  a  lengthening 
ingenuity  and  variation  of  all  the  elements  of  martyrdom 
for  soul-service  and  self-abnegation. 

Mr.  Parkman  draws  for  us,  in  deep  and  radical  terms  of 
contrast,  as  entering  into  the  very  initiatory  and  control- 
ling principles  respectively  of  the  French  and  the  English 
aims  and  methods  of  colonization,  the  ruling  spirit  which 
guided  them,  resulting  in  absolute  failure  and  disaster  for 
the  one,  and  in  marvellous  success  and  prosperity  for  the 
other.  The  French  enterprise,  as  represented  by  him,  was 
inspired  and  guided  by  and  was  wholly  in  the  interest  of 
feudalism,  monarchism,  and  spiritual  despotism.  The  Eng- 
lish enterprise  found  its  vigorous  life  and  animating  spirit 
in  working  towards  democracy,  civil  liberty,  and  soul-free- 
dom. The  French  came  here  as  soldiers,  priests,  and  free- 
traders, with  the  range  of  the  woods  for  their  goods,  and 
the  natives  as  hunters  in  their  service.  But  they  wholly 
lacked  that  sturdy  class  —  the  bone  and  sinew  of  a  commu- 
nity planting  itself  for  new  empire  on  virgin  soil  —  of  pa- 
tient toilers  on  a  reclaimed  farm,  with  rights  of  severalty 
for  homesteads;  individuals  in  their  efforts  and  success, 
but  members  of  a  commonwealth  for  mutual  help  and  se- 
curity. The  king,  the  noble,  and  the  priest  combined  to 
make  New  France  a  realm  of  reconstructed  and  revivified 
feudalism.  There  was  but  a  single  class  or  caste  of  men 
and  women  in  New  England.  Every  one  belonged  to  it ; 
it  included  the  whole ;  it  was  called  The  People.  It  did 
not  look  to  a  foreign  monarch  for  commissions  to  office 
or  power;  it  sent  back  no  report  to  king  or  minister; 
asked  for  no  foreign  soldiery,  no  cargoes  of  supplies,  even 
when  in  dire  extremity.  It  rooted  itself  independently 
of  patronage,  and  transferred  to  the  soil  the  muscle  by 
which  it  was  afterwards  held.  As  Mr.  Parkman  draws 
the  contrast,  France  in  the  New  World  was  all  head, 
without  a  body;  New  England  was  all  body,  without  a 
head. 


THE  SPANIARDS   IN   AMERICA.  263 

The  scope  of  this  volume  makes  us  concerned  with  but  a 
single  element  in  the  comprehensive  purpose  of  Mr.  Park- 
man's  brilliant  and  most  instructive  volumes.  Every  one 
of  their  pages,  either  in  the  character  or  incident  which  fills 
it,  or  in  the  graphic  style  or  the  rich  and  beautiful  rhetoric 
of  the  writer,  adds  to  our  national  literature  some  of  the 
characteristic  qualities  to  which  the  most  discriminating 
criticism  will  assign  a  high  encomium.  In  those  pages 
men  of  foreign  birth  are  naturalized  to  our  soil  and  history ; 
they  become  Americans  because  their  energies,  toils,  and 
sacrifices,  which  might  have  been  latent  in  their  veins, 
would  never  in  the  Old  World  have  been  developed,  even 
to  the  consciousness  of  their  possessors.  Champlain,  Fron- 
tenac,  La  Salle,  Marquette,  —  their  peers,  associates,  and 
brethren,  —  have  their  baptismal  records  in  the  Old  World, 
but  their  life-record  is  here. 

I  have  made  this  reference  to  the  results  of  nearly  forty 
years  of  diversified  and  concentrated  literary  toil  and  intel- 
lectual power  of  the  historian  of  New  France  in  America, 
because  in  all  his  volumes  the  theme  of  this  chapter  of  the 
present  work  is  more  or  less  distinctly  recognized.  I  must 
limit  my  own  rehearsal  strictly  to  the  relations  of  the 
French  with  our  native  tribes,  in  what  was  common  or  dis- 
tinctive in  its  bearing  upon  their  fortunes  as  resulting  from 
their  intercourse  with  Europeans. 

What  would  have  been  the  later  and  the  long  results  of 
the  exclusive  or  predominant  sway  of  the  Spanish  power 
had  it  extended  and  rooted  itself  over  our  whole  conti- 
nent may  be  inferred  from  the  history,  the  experiences, 
and  the  present  condition  of  those  portions  of  it  which 
have  from  the  first  conquest  remained  under  the  crown 
of  Spain,  or  have  had  entailed  upon  them  Spanish  influence 
and  institutions. 

The  poet  Cowper,  in  his  moralizing  strains,  nearly  a 
century  ago,  gave  voice  to  the  triumph  which  one  of  the 
Mexican  or  Peruvian  chieftains  in  the  realm  of  shades 


264          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

might  pour  forth  over  the  humbled  pride  of  the  nation 
which  had  devastated  his  lands  and  people :  — 

"Oh,  could  their  ancient  Incas  rise  again, 
How  would  they  take  up  Israel's  taunting  strain  ! 
'  Art  thou  too  fallen,  Iberia  ?    Do  we  see 
The  robber  and  the  murderer  weak  as  we  ? 
Thou,  that  hast  wasted  earth,  and  dared  despise 
Alike  the  wrath  and  mercy  of  the  skies, 
Thy  pomp  is  in  the  grave,  thy  glory  laid 
Low  in  the  pits  thine  avarice  has  made. 
We  come  with  joy  from  our  eternal  rest, 
To  see  the  oppressor  in  his  turn  oppressed  ! '"  1 

The  stupendous  and  still  unfinished  drama  of  which  this 
continent,  as  involving  the  fate  of  its  original  peoples,  has 
afforded  the  vastly  extended  stage,  with  all  its  grandeur, 
richness,  gloom,  and  sombreness  of  scenery  and  incident, 
conforms  to  the  severest  principles  laid  down  for  tragic  art. 
There  is  unity  in  the  plot;  and  its  development  through 
changing  characters,  with  their  entrances  and  their  exits, 
shifting  in  garb  and  dialogue  as  they  act  their  parts,  leads 
on  to  what  we  still  wait  for  as  the  event  of  destiny.  The 
drama  has  five  acts.  The  first,  which  we  have  rehearsed, 
is  that  of  Spain  and  the  natives  of  this  continent.  The 
second  act  brings  the  French  on  the  stage,  with  a  milder 
and  more  genial  spirit  and  purpose,  though  still  as  the 
agents  of  much  misery  to  the  red  men  alike  as  their  allies 
or  their  enemies.  The  third  act  is  filled  with  the  conflicts 
between  the  French  and  English,  —  the  natives  and  their 
lands  being  the  stake  at  hazard.  The  fourth  act  presents 
Great  Britain  in  the  war  for  independence  or  subjection 
with  her  colonies,  each  of  the  contesting  parties  arraying 
on  its  side  hostile  bands  of  the  savages.  The  fifth  act, 
still  drawing  out  its  movement,  quickened  in  earnestness 
and  activity  rather  than  growing  wearisome  and  lagging 
after  centuries  of  progress,  exhibits  our  National  Govern- 
ment, with  the  legacy  of  struggle  in  its  hands,  charged  to 

1  Cowper's  "Charity." 


FRENCH   FISHING   VOYAGES.  265 

bring  the  drama  to  its  close.  It  is  with  the  second  act  as 
it  was  in  progress,  and  with  its  actors  and  incidents,  that 
we  now  study  the  fortune  of  our  aborigines  under  one  of 
its  developments. 

The  prizes  which  the  New  World  opened  to  European 
enterprise  and  adventure  proved  very  soon  to  offer  tempta- 
tions to  all  the  maritime  powers  of  the  Old  World.  The 
Papal  Bull  which  conferred  the  whole  continent  on  the 
crown  of  Spain  was  treated  as  if  it  were  a  simple  pleas- 
antry, even  by  monarchs  who  avowed  themselves  docile 
and  faithful  subjects  of  his  Holiness;  and  as  soon  as  some 
of  the  princes  and  people  of  Europe  had  broken  from  the 
bonds  of  the  old  Church,  any  claimed  prerogative  of  the 
Pope  to  confer  rights  or  jurisdiction  here  was  utterly,  and 
as  if  by  common  consent,  discredited. 

So  the  next  act  in  the  tragic  history  of  our  aborigines 
opens  with  the  events  which  first  acquainted  them  with  the 
fact  that  the  race  of  pale-faces  coming  from  across  the  sea 
were  not  all  of  one  nation,  subjects  of  the  same  sovereign, 
having  common  interests;  but,  in  fierce  and  bloody  rivalry, 
were  transferring  to  this  new  soil  jealousies  and  hostilities 
of  foreign  dynasties.  The  earliest  lesson  of  this  sort  which 
our  Southern  Indians  had  a  chance  to  learn,  if  their  under- 
standings could  take  it  in,  was  that  some  difference  in  the 
religion  of  the  invaders  —  as  that  of  the  French  Huguenots 
and  the  Spanish  Catholics  in  Florida  —  could  add  an  embit- 
terment  to  the  raging  passion  of  their  strife. 

Beginning  as  early  as  the  year  1504,  we  find  a  con- 
stantly increasing  number  of  fishermen  from  European 
ports,  almost  exclusively  French,  resorting  to  the  banks 
near  Newfoundland  for  the  profitable  catch  of  cod.  There 
were  markets  for  vast  quantities  of  this  product  of  the  sea, 
as  a  cheap  food  for  which  there  was  a  large  demand  for  the 
Lenten  period  and  the  frequent  Fast  days  of  the  Church, 
before  its  unity  was  riven  by  the  Reformation.  It  is  ob- 
servable, too,  that  during  the  first  outburst  of  the  rage  and 


266          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

commotion  in  France,  when  the  doctrines  of  Luther,  or 
rather  of  Calvin,  were  finding  their  adherents,  and  even  in 
the  civil  war  of  dynasty  and  heresy  and  against  the  League, 
which  soon  followed,  the  fishing  trade  was  pursued  with 
ever  increasing  vigor.  There  seemed  to  be  a  truce  over 
the  briny  treasure,  and  even  at  the  French  seaports  out  of 
which  sailed  the  cranky  crafts  which  multiplied  their  ven- 
turesome voyages.  The  truce  was  first  broken  by  piratical 
plunderings  of  the  earliest  cargoes  of  peltry.  It  was  the 
familiarity  with  foreign  seas  thus  acquired  that  prompted 
many  of  the  French  and  English  voyages  of  discovery  and 
enterprises  of  colonization.  The  kings  of  France  based 
their  claims  to  transatlantic  territory  upon  the  sighting  of 
the  coast  of  Florida  by  Yerrazano  in  1524,  and  upon  the 
voyages  of  Cartier  to  Canada  ten  years  later.  To  all  but 
the  venturous  mariners  themselves  these  were  easy  terms 
for  the  acquisition  of  territorial  rights  over  this  present 
realm  of  human  thrift  and  prosperity  now  called  our  "  Na- 
tional Domain,"  in  succession  to  its  previous  titles  of  New 
Spain,  Spanish  Florida,  New  France,  and  (to  a  certain 
extent)  New  England. 

The  Frenchman  then  followed  the  Spaniard  in  his  voy- 
ages of  pelf  and  conquest  to  the  new-found  world.  The 
rude  and  simple  minds  of  the  bewildered  savages  were  to 
be  exercised  with  further  perplexities  as  to  the  realms  be- 
yond the  great  sea,  whose  restless  adventurers,  with  rival 
aims,  seemed  to  be  flocking  to  these  wildernesses  to  fight 
out  the  battles  which  had  begun  in  the  Old  World.  It  was 
in  Florida,  as  is  soon  to  be  related,  that  our  natives  had  the 
first  occasion  to  know  that  Europe  contained  rival  nationali- 
ties, and  to  have  an  opportunity  to  compare  representatives 
of  each  of  them.  In  some  very  important  qualities,  the 
difference  of  which  the  natives  of  this  continent  could 
appreciate,  their  first  French  guests  proved  themselves  less 
hateful  and  less  blasting  in  their  presence  and  errand  than 
were  the  Spaniards.  Their  chivalry  was  of  a  reduced  and 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  SPANIARDS.          267 

varied  spirit.  The  rtithlessness  and  inhumanity  and  grasp- 
ing greed  of  those  who  came  only  for  gold  and  conquest, 
whose  rushing  mail-clad  and  mounted  warriors  spread  a 
panic  terror  among  the  natives,  had  prepared  the  red  man 
to  expect  only  aggravations  of  cruelty  and  outrage  from 
each  reinforcement  of  the  invaders.  Happily  in  some  re- 
spects for  our  aborigines,  their  first  European  visitors,  the 
Spaniards,  exhausted  upon  them  the  possibilities  of  a  wild 
and  desperate  fury,  without  one  relieving  element  of  pity 
or  the  incidental  transfer  to  the  natives  of  a  single  bless- 
ing of  civilization. 

But  whatever  of  mitigation  in  the  ferocity  and  cruelty 
of  invaders  the  natives  here  might  have  noted  in  the 
French,  as  compared  with  their  Spanish  visitors,  must 
have  been  of  slight  relief  to  them  when  they  came  to  real- 
ize that,  while  they  themselves  and  their  wild  domains 
were  to  be  the  common  spoil  of  the  mysterious  adventurers, 
the  spoil  at  stake  would  find  them  embroiled  with  the 
quarrels  of  the  rivals.  Matter  of  speculation  might  be 
found  in  raising  the  question  whether  it  would  have  fared 
better  or  worse  for  the  natives  had  only  a  single  one  of  the 
European  nationalities  at  the  time  maintained  the  exclu- 
sive right  of  commerce,  conquest,  and  occupancy  on  the 
new  continent.  It  is  conceivable,  though  hardly  probable, 
that  if  the  Spaniards  had  for  even  a  century  been  per- 
mitted to  hold  and  improve  the  sole  territorial  right  here 
which  the  bull  of  the  Pope  conferred  upon  their  sovereign, 
they  might  even  have  found  it  for  their  advantage  to  have 
conciliated  the  natives,  to  have  put  them  to  some  other 
use  than  slaughter  or  even  slavery,  and  to  have  established 
with  them  relations  of  mutual  service.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, the  temper  or  the  aim  of  the  chivalric  age  of  Spain 
to  seek  for  any  work  of  peaceful  colonization. 

The  enterprises  of  French  adventurers  and  colonists 
which  brought  them  into  contact  with  our  natives  began, 
with  a  considerable  interval  of  time  between  them,  on  both 


268  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

the  southern  and  northern  borders  of  our  domain.  We 
are  concerned  with  these  enterprises  solely  as  they  bear  on 
our  single  subject,  —  the  relations  of  Europeans  with  the 
aborigines.  The  story  is  essentially  the  same  in  all  its 
chief  incidents  and  colorings  from  whichever  of  the  nation- 
alities of  the  Old  World  the  intruders  came.  We  have 
feeble  companies  of  sea-worn  adventurers  sounding  their 
way  for  a  harborage,  bewildered  by  the  strangeness  of  their 
experience,  but  wrought  to  fever-heats  of  passion  for  adven- 
ture or  rapidly  acquired  wealth ;  we  note  the  same  kindly 
reception  and  hospitable  entertainment  by  the  amazed  and 
awe-stricken  savages ;  and  we  have  to  repeat  the  humiliat- 
ing record  of  treacherous  returns  in  fraud  and  outrage  by 
the  whites.  In  each  and  every  case,  too,  we  find  the  whites 
availing  themselves  of  intestine  feuds  and  hostilities  among 
the  native  tribes  in  every  locality,  to  form  alliances  setting 
Indian  against  Indian  ;  putting  themselves,  often  unneces- 
sarily, into  fierce  antagonism  with  one  party,  and  beginning 
the  entail  of  the  successive  calamities  brought  on  the  lower 
by  the  superior  race.  It  is  well  for  us  repeatedly  to  recog- 
nize the  disturbed,  acrimonious,  and  embittered  relations 
which  the  Europeans  found  existing  among  the  aborigines, 
as  the  fact  has  always  been  alleged  as  palliating  the  inter- 
vention of  the  whites  as  only  introducing  one  new  party  to 
the  conflict. 

It  seems  to  have  been  but  a  wanton  provocation,  or  at 
least  an  unwise  anticipation  of  a  vengeful  jealousy  from  the 
Spaniards,  when,  as  the  only  nationality  of  the  Old  World, 
they  were  flushed  with  their  pride  of  monopoly  in  the  new 
continent,  that  the  first  French  enterprise  for  transatlan- 
tic colonization  should  have  led  its  adventurers  into  the 
very  jaws  of  the  proud  pioneers  of  American  empire.  Had 
the  French  made  their  first  attempts  in  the  North,  as  they 
did  less  than  a  half  century  afterwards,  it  is  probable  that 
they  would  have  spared  the  record  of  history  the  narration 
of  what  is,  on  the  whole,  its  most  blood-curdling  episode  on 


THE   FRENCH  IN   FLORIDA.  269 

this  continent.  It  may  well  be  believed  that  there  is  hardly 
a  single  square  mile  of  now  occupied  territory  on  its  once 
virgin  soil  which  is  not  stained  with  the  life-current  of  the 
common  humanity  of  the  red  man  and  the  white  man,  in 
their  deadly  strifes.  If  there  be  any  such  spaces  where  the 
veins  of  the  red  men  have  not  flowed,  the  whites,  in  their 
own  feuds  and  wars,  have  supplied  the  stains.  Over  all 
these  busy  realms  of  thrift  have  floated  the  wails  of  hu- 
man agony.  But  the  region  where  the  concentrated  and 
direful  rage  of  passion  and  savagery  waxed  most  fiercely  is 
now  one  of  the  fairest  and  most  favored  in  our  land.  There 
in  Florida,  "the  Land  of  Flowers,"  whither  the  invalid  and 
the  feeble,  the  worn  and  the  weary,  from  our  Northern 
cities,  flee  from  wintry  airs  and  storms  to  seek  recuperative 
vigor,  are  the  scenes  of  the  most  appalling  record  in  our 
history.  A  lavish  luxuriance  of  verdure  and  of  beauty  has 
re-wreathed  those  scenes  in  peace.  Prolific  Nature,  cover- 
ing its  stately  forests  with  vines  and  mosses,  duplicates  its 
own  growths.  Rapid  and  lazy  streams,  impenetrable  glades, 
abounding  creeks  and  bays,  oozy  marshes,  make  the  region, 
like  many  of  its  own  animal  products,  as  it  were  amphib- 
ious. There  the  opening  enterprises  of  European  civiliza- 
tion on  this  continent  first  spent  arid  exhausted  themselves 
in  the  devastation  and  havoc  alike  of  scenery  and  of  hu- 
manity. Christians  were  represented  there,  after  the  first 
sundering  of  their  former  unity,  in  a  collision  which  swelled 
and  fired  all  the  alienations  of  passion  and  hate.  The  na- 
tives for  the  first  time  saw  the  rage  and  the  weapons,  of 
which  up  to  that  time  they  alone  had  been  the  victims, 
turned  by  the  white  men  who  had  come  among  them  from 
across  the  seas  against  each  other's  breasts,  while  new  curs- 
ings and  imprecations  of  scorn  and  malignity  entered  into 
the  frenzies  of  the  conflict. 

The  spirit  of  the  reform  in  religion  was  drawing  its  fires 
over  France,  inflaming  the  madness  of  civil  strife,  glowing 
in  the  zeal  of  cruel  bigots  and  in  the  fervent  constancy  of 


270          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

early  converts.  Monarchs  and  courtiers  were  to  hesitate 
for  an  interval  as  to  the  side  which  was  to  win,  and  there- 
fore to  be  espoused.  Intense  and  deadly  was  the  suspended 
issue,  which  at  last  found  its  diabolical  solution  amid  the 
horrors  of  St.  Bartholomew. 

The  spirit  of  reform  in  Central  Europe  had  reached  Spain 
only  to  raise  to  white  heat  the  rage  of  bigotry.  The  part 
which  Spain  played  in  the  wars  of  the  League  might  well 
give  forewarning  as  to  how  she  would  deal  with  heretic 
trespassers  on  her  American  shores.  Here,  then,  near  the 
sea-coast  of  Florida,  on  the  banks  of  its  majestic  river, 
which,  running  parallel  with  the  ocean,  almost  severs  the 
length  of  the  land,  was  to  be  the  battle-field  between 
Catholics  and  heretics, — the  natives  by  no  means  being 
quiet  lookers-on  or  umpires. 

Gaspar  de  Coligny,  Admiral  of  France,  the  peer  of  the 
mightiest  and  noblest  of  the  realm,  was  by  dignity,  con- 
stancy, and  fervor  of  conviction  the  most  signal  repre- 
sentative of  the  Huguenots.  Bigotry,  malice,  and  all  other 
spiteful  passions  might  frown  and  rage  against  him,  but 
they  could  not  reach  him.  He  prompted  Charles  IX.  of 
France  to  give  his  royal  sanction  to  a  colonial  enterprise 
of  the  Huguenots  in  America,  in  1562.  The  English 
reader  may  best  and  mogt  easily  acquaint  himself  with 
the  deplorable  venture  on  the  pages  of  Parkman's  "  Pio- 
neers of  France"  and  in  the  admirable  biography  of  Jean 
Ribault,  by  Sparks.  With  this  royal  commission,  and 
while  France  and  Spain  were  at  amity,  Ribault  first,  and 
then  Laudonniere,  sought  to  lay  a  foundation  of  French 
empire  in  the  New  World.  Entering  what  they  called  the 
River  May,  now  the  St.  John,  in  Florida,  they  raised  a 
pillar  of  hewn  stone,  inscribed  with  the  King's  arms, 
which  was  afterwards  wreathed  by  the  natives  with  flow- 
ers and  surrounded  with  donative  offerings,  as  if  it  had 
been  an  altar.  The  gushings  and  overflowings  of  senti- 
ment, and  all  the  wealth  of  admiring  phrases  and  epi- 


SIR  JOHN  HAWKINS'S  SLAVE-SHIPS.  271 

thets,  are  exhausted  by  the  sea-tossed  roamers  in  describ- 
ing the  lavish  loveliness,  the  exceeding  fertility  and  glory 
of  the  scene.  With  equal  fondness  and  exuberance  they 
rehearse  the  mild  and  generous  behavior  and  munificence 
of  the  natives  in  their  peaceful  welcome,  in  their  wild 
delights  over  their  visitors,  and  their  heaped  donations  of 
the  best  of  their  food.  After  building  a  fort,  which  they 
named  Caroline,  Kibault  returned  to  France,  leaving  thirty 
colonists  —  as  Columbus  had  done  at  La  Navidad,  on  going 
back  from  his  first  voyage  —  to  plant  a  permanent  colony. 
The  result  of  this  second  good  intention,  as  had  been  that 
of  its  precedent,  was  but  woful  disaster.  The  colony  was 
reinforced  the  next  year  by  Laudonniere.  The  new  comers, 
in  response  to  the  magnanimity  of  the  chieftain  of  the 
tribe  within  whose  bounds  they  had  settled,  had  hastily 
entered  into  a  pledge  of  amity  with  him,  which  included 
an  alliance  with  him  against  his  native  enemies.  It  proved 
that  he  was  weaker  than  one  of  his  neighbor  chieftains 
with  whom  he  was  at  war.  The  colonists  perfidiously 
made  terms  with  the  stronger  party  ;  and  their  perfidy, 
with  their  arrogance,  their  exactions,  and  their  outrages 
against  their  first  friends,  brought  them  into  complications 
of  mischief.  This,  with  a  mutinous  spirit  among  them- 
selves, their  laziness,  wastefulness,  and  self-abandonment, 
crowned  the  fate  of  their  enterprise.  They  were  about 
abandoning  it,  in  despair  of  help  from  France,  by  having 
recourse  to  a  leaky  craft  of  their  own  making,  when  tempo- 
rary relief  came. 

A  strange  episode  cheered  these  forlorn  exiles  when  at 
their  lowest  depths  in  mutiny  and  starvation  among  the 
exasperated  natives.  On  a  fair  morning  in  August,  1565, 
four  vessels,  one  of  great  bulk,  were  sighted  on  the  horizon. 
They  might  be  a  supply  fleet  from  France ;  they  might  be 
a  vengeful  company  of  cutthroats  from  Spain.  They  were 
neither.  On  board  the  largest  vessel,  named  "  Jesus,"  was 
the  commander  Sir  John  Hawkins,  of  world-wide  fame  for 


272  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

prowess,  but  known  under  another  title  now,  as  "  the  father 
of  the  English  slave-trade."  With  his  other  three  vessels, 
the  "  Solomon,"  the  "  Tiger,"  and  the  "  Swallow,"  he  had 
just  sold  at  Hispaniola  cargoes  of  slaves  which  he  had  kid- 
napped at  Guinea.  Thus  England,  by  her  ships  and  mari- 
ners, was  represented,  in  character,  as  the  third  of  the 
great  European  nationalities  on  a  scene  which  was  to  open 
the  lengthening  struggle  between  what  we  call  civilization 
and  barbarism.  Hawkins  as  a  Protestant  took  pity  on  the 
wretched  remnant  of  the  Huguenots,  relieved  their  imme- 
diate distresses,  sold  them  a  vessel,  taking  payment  in  can- 
non and  stores,  and  courteously  offered  to  transport  them 
all  free  to  France.  This  offer  honor  and  scruples  com- 
pelled the  French  commander  to  decline. 

At  length  Ribault,  long  looked  for,  having  been  delayed 
by  troubles  in  France,  arrived  with  reinforcements  and 
supplies.  Hardly,  however,  had  his  vessels  reached  a  har- 
borage, when  more  ominous  sights  upon  the  waters  of  the 
sea  revealed  the  arrival  of  the  dispensers  of  vengeance 
against  trespassers  under  the  more  hateful  guise  of  heretics, 
to  whom  was  due  only  death  and  damnation.  Some  of  the 
Spanish  vessels  ran  down  the  coast,  chased  by  some  of  Ri- 
bault's,  when  a  fierce  and  prolonged  tempest  raging  on  land 
and  water  dispersed  and  wrecked  many  of  both  fleets.  The 
fiery  and  zealous  Menendez,  the  Spanish  commander,  with 
the  company  of  such  of  his  followers  as  had  reached  and 
entered  an  inlet  on  the  south,  near  what  he  soon  after- 
wards founded  as  the  city  of  St.  Augustine,  the  oldest 
city  in  the  United  States,  resolved  on  immediate  ven- 
geance. Knowing  that  Fort  Caroline  was  dilapidated  and 
weakened,  he  roused  a  body  of  five  hundred  of  his  quail- 
ing and  reluctant  followers,  exhausted  and  famished,  to 
make  a  forced  march  by  night  and  day,  through  tempest 
and  drenching  rain,  across  swamps,  forests,  and  jungles, 
sleepless  and  unfed,  to  surprise  the  heretic  hive.  He  was 
guided  by  a  renegade  Frenchman  and  some  Indians, — 


SPANIARDS   AND    FRENCH   IN   FLORIDA.  273 

being  ferociously  and  atrociously  speeded  in  his  diabolical 
work.  The  victory  was  complete,  unredeemed  by  a  single 
relenting  of  human  pity,  but  blackened  by  breach  of  faith 
and  by  every  enormity  of  barbarity  to  those  whom  he 
boasted  that  he  had  given  to  slaughter  —  one  hundred 
and  forty-two  in  number  — "  not  as  Frenchmen,  but  as 
heretics."  The  prisoners,  with  their  hands  tied  behind 
them,  in  groups  of  four,  were  led  to  the  massacre  and 
hewn  down  with  axes.  Their  bodies  were  dismembered, 
transfixed  on  spears,  and  hung  upon  the  trees. 

Enough  of  the  destined  victims  escaped,  by  well-nigh 
superhuman  effort  and  endurance,  to  leave  for  history  full 
and  harrowing  narratives  of  the  appalling  tragedy,  made 
so,  not  by  its  bringing  human  beings  to  the  inevitable  lot, 
but  by  its  circumstances  and  aggravations  of  horror.  How 
does  it  shock  and  stagger  our  conscious  sentiment  of  what 
is,  of  what  belongs  to,  and  what  should  be  wrought  by, 
religion  to  contemplate  a  scene  like  that  upon  a  garden 
panorama  of  Nature,  the  pines,  the  palms,  and  the  flowers 
dressing  it  and  wreathing  it  in  gorgeous  beauty !  And  how 
stands  the  doctrine  and  hope  of  an  immortal  life  for  the 
animating  essence  of  being  in  humanity — whether  Catholic 
or  heretic,  Christian  or  heathen  —  amid  such  a  wrack  of 
raving  passions  and  agonies  ?  A  few  escaped,  returning  to 
France,  some  of  them  to  England,  to  tell  the  tale.  They 
had  rushed  from  the  fort  under  the  knives,  the  spears,  and 
the  blunderbusses  of  the  Spanish  devils.  Crawling  through 
the  woods,  wading  up  to  their  arm-pits  in  the  marshes, 
lacerated  by  thorns,  tripped  by  vines,  famished  and  despair- 
ing, warned  off  even  by  the  Indians  who  feared  to  protect 
them,  some  of  them,  including  Laudonni^re,  were  finally 
rescued  by  the  boats  of  their  friends  and  taken  on  board 
their  vessels.  And  what  meanwhile  was  the  meaning  of 
the  scene  for  the  natives,  who  were  to  be  blessed  and  saved 
by  the  gospel  of  the  white  men  ? 

Hakluyt  has  given  us  narrations  of  the  colony  by  Bibault, 

18 


274  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

who  perished  in  the  massacre,  and  by  LaudonniSre  who 
escaped  it.  There  is  another  interesting  record  of  it. 
Among  those  who  escaped  was  the  artist  of  the  enter- 
prise, Le  Moyne,  engaged  by  Laudonni^re  in  1564  to  accom- 
pany the  expedition  as  draughtsman  of  sea-coast  maps  and 
scenes,  and  to  make  soundings.  He  spent  some  years  after 
his  escape  in  England,  where  he  died.  Here  he  wrote,  in 
French,  his  "  Brief  Narration  "  of  the  occurrences  of  which 
he  had  been  an  eye-witness  in  Florida,  and  drew  from 
memory  (for  in  his  flight  he  took  nothing  with  him  into 
the  woods)  many  drawings  of  the  natives,  in  costume,  in 
war  parties,  village  life,  games,  etc.  These  drawings,  are 
spirited,  and  give  many  evidences  of  fidelity  and  accuracy 
in  representation  and  detail.  De  Bry  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Le  Moyne  in  London,  in  1587,  and  soon  after,  on 
his  decease,  purchased  of  his  widow  his  manuscript  and 
drawings,  translating  the  former  into  Latin,  and  publishing 
it  in  his  "  Great  Voyages." 1 

When  intelligence  of  this  Spanish  massacre  reached 
France,  though  the  victims  of  it  as  heretics  could  look 
for  no  avenging  from  the  then  all-powerful  priestly  party, 
a  deep  and  bitter  indignation  was  roused  in  the  realm. 
More  than  even  for  its  barbarous  inhumanity  was  the 
stinging  insult  of  it  realized  as  perpetrated  by  the  subjects 
of  a  king  at  amity  with  a  brother  monarch,  who  had  at 
least  sanctioned  the  Huguenot  enterprise.  But  the  French 
king  was  in  the  toils  of  the  priestly  and  Spanish  intrigues, 
and  could  not  be  roused  to  resentment.  One  of  his  chivalric 
subjects,  untitled,  and  it  is  not  positively  known  whether  he 
was  a  Catholic  or  a  Protestant,  Dominique  de  Gourgues, 
resolved  to  clear  the  honor  of  the  realm  from  the  foul  stain 
by  a  signal  reprisal.  Concealing  his  ultimate  object,  and 

1  A  translation  into  English  of  the  ' '  Narration  "  of  Le  Moyne,  from  De 
Bry's  Latin  version,  with  heliotypes  taken  in  London  from  the  author's  origi- 
nal drawings,  was  published  in  Boston,  in  1875,  at  the  charge  of  Mr.  William 
Appleton,  by  James  R.  Osgood  &  Co. 


DE  GOURGUES  IN   FLORIDA.  275 

wholly  at  his  own  charges,  with  three  vessels  and  a  bold 
company  who  knew  not  their  errand,  he  obtained  a  commis- 
sion from  the  king,  nominally  for  other  enterprises.  After 
devious  cruisings  and  adventures,  he  made  known  to  his 
company  the  intent  of  his  schemes.  Appealing  to  them, 
after  their  silence  and  surprise,  by  the  honor  and  glory  of 
France,  to  avenge  the  bitter  insult  to  its  dignity,  he  roused 
their  wildest  enthusiasm  and  impatience  to  an  unsparing 
wreaking  of  vengeance.  Sailing  by  the  scene  of  the  mas- 
sacre, where  Menendez  had  strengthened  his  defences,  his 
vessels  exchanged  salutes  with  the  batteries  of  the  sus- 
picious foe.  Making  a  landing  fifteen  leagues  above  the 
fort,  he  found  vast  numbers  of  the  natives,  under  the  wild- 
est excitement,  rushing  and  foaming  in  warlike  array,  and 
profusely  welcoming  the  strangers  as  soon  as  they  were 
known  to  be  Frenchmen.  For  ruthlessly  as  the  former 
Huguenot  colonists  had  treated  the  natives,  their  behavior 
and  deeds  had  been  gentle  compared  with  the  incessant 
exasperations,  outrages,  and  ingenuities  of  cruelty  endured 
by  them  from  the  Spaniards,  against  whom  their  rage  had 
become  infuriate. 

An  alliance  was  soon  formed  for  joint  vengeance  between 
Be  Gourgues  and  a  countless  horde  of  the  painted  and  yell- 
ing natives.  The  strife  was  prepared  for  and  the  covenant 
ratified  by  the  fierce  pantomime  of  feast  and  dancing.  The 
avenging  stroke  was  overwhelming ;  victory  was  complete. 
The  hero  gave  utterance  to  his  scorn  and  disdain  of  the 
butchers,  whose  own  deeds,  after  they  had  listened  to  his  in- 
vectives, he  proceeded  to  re-enact  in  summary  and  sweeping 
carnage.  Imitating  with  change  of  terms  the  inscription 
which  Menendez  had  raised  over  his  Huguenot  victims, 
De  Gourgues  burned  into  a  wooden  tablet  this  legend: 
"  Not  as  to  Spaniards,  but  as  to  traitors,  robbers,  and  mur- 
derers." Menendez  was  then  in  Spain ;  and  as  it  was  no 
part  of  De  Gourgues'  design  to  meddle  with  the  Spanish 
fort  at  St.  Augustine,  he  returned  in  chivalric  triumph  to 


276  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

France,  to  enjoy  the  plaudits  of  its  nobler  people,  and  the 
secret  approbation  of  the  monarch  who  dared  not  express 
it,  while  the  Spanish  ambassador  at  the  court  demanded  the 
head  of  the  hero.  He  lived  to  do  splendid  service  for  his 
country  against  the  Spaniards. 

Here  closed  till  a  much  later  period  the  relations  be- 
tween the  French  and  the  natives  near  our  Southern 
bounds.  We  must  now  shift  the  scene  to  the  North,  where 
Spanish  Florida  was  to  be  converted  into  New  France.  Still 
holding  to  the  claim  of  territorial  right  by  the  discoveries 
of  Verrazano,  the  French  monarch  became  as  lavish  as  he 
was  inconstant  and  inconsistent  in  granting  patents,  seign- 
iories, and  monopolies  of  dominion  and  trade  to  such  of 
his  subjects,  glowing  with  zeal  and  love  of  adventure,  as 
could  make  interest  to  secure  them.  These  royal  gifts, 
however,  as  the  event  proved  to  the  discomfiture  and  ruin 
of  the  receivers,  were  held  on  an  uncertain  tenure,  often 
forgotten,  annulled,  or  overridden  by  influence  and  favor- 
itism. Beginning  from  the  years  1534-35,  with  the  voy- 
ages of  Jacques  Cartier  to  the  Gulf  and  up  the  River  St. 
Lawrence,  there  was  a  series  of  tentative  enterprises  on  the 
islands  and  in  Acadia,  running  on  to  the  actual  foundation 
of  Quebec,  by  Champlain,  in  1608.  After  the  taking  of  the 
cod  and  the  whale  on  the  coast  had  secured  enormous 
profits,  a  yet  more  enriching  traffic  followed.  Paris  offered 
a  steadily  extending  market  for  the  peltries  of  the  wilder- 
ness,—  the  beaver,  the  otter,  the  marten,  the  fox,  the  lynx, 
and  the  larger  robes  of  the  moose,  the  deer,  the  caribou,  and 
the  bear.  The  king  and  his  patentees  found  it  as  difficult 
to  secure  a  covenanted  monopoly  in  this  traffic  as  it  would 
have  been  to*  exhaust  the  supply  of  these  precious  spoils 
spread  over  the  vast  and  limitless  expanse  of  a  mighty  con- 
tinent. Sixty-eight  years  after  the  first  voyage  of  Cartier, 
and  fifteen  years  before  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  at 
Plymouth,  the  noble  Champlain — a  hero  in  every  nerve  and 
muscle,  a  saint  too  in  some  of  his  lofty  and  generous  quali- 


THE   FRENCH   IN   ACADIA.  277 

ties — first  appears  upon  the  scenes  of  ocean  and  land  in  the 
New  World.  He  had  sailed  into  and  skirted  the  shores  of 
Massachusetts  Bay,  where  he  had  seen  vast  numbers  of  the 
natives  in  1605,  thus  confirming  the  uniform  story  of  a 
destructive  plague  having  ravaged  the  region  and  nearly 
exterminated  the  savages  just  previous  to  the  coming  of 
the  English  colonists.  Champlain  entitled  his  first  publi- 
cation (1604),  "Les  Sauvages."  The  abortive  and  long- 
baffled  enterprises  at  Acadia  at  last  became  secondary  to 
that  of  a  strong  and  firm  though  at  times  imperilled  hold 
of  established  French  sway  in  Canada.  A  passing  notice 
is  here  prompted  of  the  curious  fact,  that,  while  the  first 
collision  between  rival  European  nationalities  on  this  conti- 
nent—  that  between  the  French  Huguenots  and  the  Span- 
iards—  took  place  at  the  scene  of  modern  pleasure-resort 
in  winter  for  a  summer  climate,  the  next  encounter — that 
between  rival  claimants,  Englishmen  and  Frenchmen — - 
occurred  in  1613  at  the  favorite  summer-haunt,  Mount 
Desert.  Frenchman's  Bay  still  preserves  the  memory  of 
the  onslaught  by  Captain  Argall,  of  Virginia,  upon  the  set- 
tlement made  near  by,  by  Saussaye,  with  a  French  commis- 
sion. The  latter  was  charged  with  "  an  invasion  of  British 
territory,"  made  such  by  the  sighting  of  the  coast  by  Cabot. 
The  incident  was  a  significant  prognostication  of  what 
was  to  follow  through  a  century  and  a  half  of  embittered 
civilized  and  savage  warfare. 

It  does  not  appear  that  any  other  than  amicable  relations 
had  existed  betweeen  the  natives  in  and  around  Acadia, 
and  the  successive  French  adventurers  there.  Some  curi- 
ous incidents  of  missionary  experience  in  those  regions 
will  claim  notice  in  the  subsequent  chapter  assigned  to 
that  subject.  Cartier,  in  his  first  voyage,  in  1534,  was 
most  kindly  and  hospitably  treated  by  the  natives.  He  re- 
quited this  kindness  by  kidnapping  two  young  Indians, 
whom  he  carried  to  France,  bringing  them  back  to  the  St. 
Lawrence  the  next  year  to  serve  him  as  interpreters.  It  is 


278  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

noteworthy  that  in  every  instance  reported  to  us  in  which 
natives  of  any  age,  by  fraud  or  voluntarily,  were  carried 
either  to  Spain,  England,  or  France,  none  of  them  wished 
to  remain  abroad,  but  all  pined  for  their  wilderness  homes. 
It  was  thought  that  their  amazement,  curiosity,  and  interest, 
engaged  in  foreign  scenes  by  court  pageantry  and  all  the 
sights  and  splendors  of  civilization, — castles,  churches, 
machinery, — would  wean  them  from  their  rude  habits  and 
associations.  But  it  proved  quite  otherwise.  Exile  was  to 
them  misery ;  and  when  after  expatriation  they  returned, 
they  were  like  uncaged  birds  or  wild  beasts  escaped  from 
the  toils.  This  fact,  as  we  shall  note,  has  a  bearing  upon 
the  question  of  the  capacity  and  aptitude  of  the  Indian 
for  civilization. 

Before  Cartier  returned  from  his  second  voyage  up  the 
St.  Lawrence,  in  1535,  by  a  mean  artifice  he  entrapped  on 
board  his  vessel  Donnacona  and  other  chiefs,  from  whom 
he  had  received  a  hearty  welcome  and  much  food.  Most 
of  the  captives  died  of  home-sickness  in  France,  though 
rich  amends,  it  was  presumed,  had  been  made  to  them  by 
the  privilege  of  baptism.  When  these  kidnapped  chiefs 
were  afterwards  inquired  for  by  their  kinsfolk,  Cartier  told 
them  that  Donnacona  had  died,  but  that  others  of  them 
had  made  high  marriages  in  France,  and  lived  in  state  like 
lords. 

It  might  have  seemed,  as  has  been  said,  that  the  French 
colonists  could  have  lived  at  peace  with  the  natives,  and 
indeed  have  found  their  interest  in  so  doing,  especially 
as  their  main  object  was  not  so  much,  or  scarce  at  all, 
the  clearing  and  occupancy  of  large  spaces  of  land,  but  the 
enriching  fur-trade.  The  example  may  be  cited  of  the 
companies  and  brigades  of  Scotchmen  and  Englishmen 
who,  in  the  employ  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  for  nearly 
two  centuries,  carried  on  a  vastly  lucrative  trade  with  the 
savages,  being  at  perfect  amity,  and  indeed  in  most  cordial 
relations,  with  them.  But,  as  we  shall  see,  the  scheme 


CHAMPLAIN   IN   QUEBEC.  279 

which  Champlain  had  conceived  from  the  first,  or  which 
very  soon  matured  itself  in  his  views,  and  the  constraint 
of  the  circumstances  amid  which  he  found  himself,  im- 
mediately involved  him  in  a  warfare  which,  once  begun,  was 
to  find  no  end  till  the  dominion  of  France  was  extinguished 
on  the  continent.  Champlain  might  at  first  have  been 
fully  content  to  have  one  or  more  tribes  of  Indians  as 
friends.  But  he  found  that  he  could  not  secure  this  end 
without  having  more  tribes  as  enemies,  because  they  were 
the  foes  of  his  allies.  He  was  all  too  readily,  however, 
drawn  into  what  he  regarded  as  the  compulsion  of  neces- 
sity for  taking  a  side, — only,  without  intending  it,  he  took 
the  weaker,. side.  * 

Champlain  passed  his  first  winter  in  Quebec,  in  1608. 
It  was  a  terrific  and  a  seasoning  experience  for  him  and 
his  associates.  Of  the  twenty-eight  men  of  the  company, 
only  eight  were  alive  in  the  spring:  cold,  exposure,  lack 
of  comfort,  enforced  idleness  in  a  rigid  climate,  land  and 
water  heaped  in  mountain  piles  of  snow  and  locked  in  icy 
fetters,  with  the  loathsome  havoc  of  the  scurvy,  had  so  re- 
duced them.  The  spring  brought  reinforcements  to  Cham- 
plain.  His  friends  among  the  natives  were  not  of  his  own 
choosing.  They  were  A'lgonquins,  —  large  remnants  then 
of  once  numerous  and  powerful  tribes,  Montagnais  and 
Hurons.  The  confederated,  thrifty,  and  imperious  Five 
Nations,  or  Iroquois,  in  central  New  York,  were  at  deadly 
feud  with  them,  and  had  annually  swept  and  desolated 
their  cornfields  and  villages  with  fire  and  slaughter.  On 
the  first  year  of  his  sojourn  at  Quebec  Champlain  became 
a  party  to  this  savage  feud.  Why  did  he  so  ?  He  was  of 
an  almost  ideal  loftiness  and  grandeur  of  spirit.  With  a 
manly  devoutness  to  consecrate  his  heroism  he  preserved 
a  strict  moral  purity,  inexplicable  by  his  lax  Indian  hosts, 
which  preserved  him  from  the  sensuality  so  freely  indulged, 
with  large  opportunities,  by  his  volatile  countrymen.  For 
twenty  years  he  made  almost  annually  a  spring  and  au- 


280  THE   FRENCH   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

tumn  transit  of  the  seas,  alternating  between  the  court  of 
France  —  where  he  defended,  or  drew  friends  to,  his  col- 
ony —  and  the  depths  of  sombre  wildernesses,  patient  un- 
der all  buffe  tings  and  privations.  More  than  any  other 
white  man  he  awed  and  won  the  confidence  and  love  of  the 
natives.  He  could  command,  threaten,  and  sway  them;  and, 
though  with  scowls  and  murmurs  they  might  hesitate,  they 
generally  yielded  to  his  mastery.  He  held  in  equal  poise 
in  his  aims  two  great  objects  not  inconsistent  each  with 
the  other,  but  mutually  helpful  as  he  viewed  them,  —  the 
commercial  interests  of  New  France,  and  the  conversion  to 
the  Church  of  its  debased,  imbruted,  and  benighted  natives. 
Beside  these  was  the  lure  of  finding  a  water-way  to  China 
and  the  East.  Mr.  Parkman  well  says  of  this  grand  vision- 
ary :  "  Of  the  pioneers  of  the  North  American  forests,  his 
name  stands  foremost  -on  the  list.  It  was  he  who  struck 
the  deepest  and  boldest  strokes  into  the  heart  of  their  pris- 
tine barbarism."1  Whether  from  the  first  he  had  matured 
a  plan,  that  which  guided  him  to  the  end  of  his  career  is 
strongly  defined  by  Mr.  Parkman  as  follows.  It  was  "  to 
influence  Indian  counsels,  to  hold  the  balance  of  power 
between  adverse  tribes,  to  envelop  in  the  network  of  French 
power  and  diplomacy  the  remotest  hordes  of  the  wilder- 
ness."2 At  some  commanding  position  on  the  line  of 
water-transit  from  the  vast  interior  to  the  sea,  he  would 
plant  a  fort  that  should  secure  the  mastery  for  all  trade 
and  intercourse. 

But  here  at  the  North,  as  on  the  Southern  bounds  of  our 
present  domain,  the  Europeans  found  the  native  tribes  in 
deadly  strife  together.  As  soon  as  they  were  able  to  appre- 
hend the  facts  and  the  traditions  of  these  tribes,  —  still 
existing  in  strength,  or  in  exhausted  and  subjugated  rem- 
nants,—  they  learned  that  the  strife,  with  its  varying  for- 
tunes, ferocious  and  pitiless,  had  been  going  on  for  undated 
time.  The  French  could  but  take  part  in  it.  It  was  not 

1  Pioneers  of  France,  etc.,  p.  345.  2  Ibid.,  p.  309. 


CHAMPLAIN'S  INDIAN  ALLIES  AND  FOES.  281 

for  them  to  ask  as  to  the  right  or  wrong  in  any  case  where 
moral  distinctions  were  inapplicable,  between  tribes  of 
wild  heathens.  They  must  make  terms  with  their  nearest 
neighbors,  and  hold  their  enemies  common  enemies.  Over 
and  over  again  did  discomfitures  and  calamities,  in  dismal 
variety,  threaten  absolute  failure  of  enterprises.  But  again 
and  again  fresh  spirits — nerved  by  an  iron  resolve,  and  fired 
by  greed,  the  love  of  adventure,  fanaticism,  and  the  rest- 
lessness of  a  fermenting  age  —  renewed  the  venture.  The 
retrospect  of  the  fortunes  of  the  red  race,  which  has  been 
yielding  and  fading  before  this  persistent  and  lion-hearted 
endeavor,  is  prevailingly  melancholy,  as  it  presents  imbe- 
cility and  incapacity  succumbing  to  the  potency  of  skill  and 
energy.  But  from  the  earlier  enterprises  of  the  white  race 
on  this  continent,  especially  as  represented  by  the  French, 
we  are  made  to  know  what  there  is  in  the  reserved  re* 
sources  of  human  nature  for  endurance  and  buffeting,  for 
persistency  and  patience  of  all  hardships.  This  nature  of 
ours  is  not  susceptible  only  to  the  blandishments  of  ease 
and  fulness  of  pleasure :  it  is  furnished  with  its  own  armor 
for  perils  that  have  been  courted,  and  for  straits  of  experi- 
ence which  line  the  way  to  all  consummate  ambitions. 

Mr.  Parkman  rightly  tells  us  that  "  in  one  point  Cham- 
"plain's  plan  was  fatally  defective,  since  it  involved  the 
deadly  enmity  of  a  race  whose'  character  and  whose  power 
were  as  yet  but  ill  understood,  —  the  fiercest,  the  boldest, 
the  most  politic,  and  the  most  ambitious  savages  to  whom 
the  American  forest  has  ever  given  birth  and  nurture." l 

Champlain  initiated  the  policy  which  all  his  successors 
representing  French  dominion  here  felt  themselves  com- 
pelled to  follow.  With  allies,  some  of  whom  wholly  failed 
him  at  the  time  and  place  of  concourse,  and  all  of  whom, 
by  their  turbulence,  their  laggardness,  and  incompetency 
of  discipline,  were  as  much  a  torment  as  a  help  to  him,  he 
rashly  drew  upon  himself  the  rage  of  the  Iroquois  by  an 

1  Pioneers  of  France,  etc.,  p.  362. 


282  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

invasion  of  their  well-defended  territories.  Not  always 
did  his  arquebuse  and  his  armor  secure  him  awe  and  a 
charmed  immunity.  He  found  the  fortified  towns  of  the 
Iroquois,  with  their  triple  rows  of  strong  palisades,  with 
galleries  for  bowsmen  and  water-gutters  for  extinguishing 
fires,  were  not  to  be  mastered  by  a  handful  of  Frenchmen 
and  five  hundred  yelling  Hurons.  He  was  signally  baffled 
and  disappointed.  He  was  severely  wounded,  so  that  he 
had  to  be  borne  off  in  a  basket  on  the  back  of  an  Indian, 
and  so  lost  his  prestige  with  friend  and  foe.  He  was  initi- 
ated in  all  the  atrocities  of  torture  and  burning,  and  his 
remonstrances  were  vain  as  addressed  to  those  who  had  no 
word  nor  any  sense  for  humanity. 

Very  soon  after  the  settlement  of  Dutch  farmers  and 
traders  on  the  Hudson  River,  in  1614,  the  powerful  tribes 
of  central  New  York,  with  whom  they  had  established  ami- 
cable and  very  profitable  relations,  were  furnished  by  them 
with  fire-arms  and  ammunition,  in  express  violation  of  the 
prohibition  of  the  authorities  of  the  Dutch  colony.  But  as 
some  of  these  authorities  were  themselves  the  traffickers 
who  dealt  in  the  forbidden  weapons,  the  traffic  was  winked 
at.  Guns  and  strong  waters  soon  became  the  most  coveted 
articles  of  trade  and  barter  with  the  natives.  The  charmed 
weapon,  one  discharge  of  which,  as  it  belched  forth  its 
flame  and  sped  its  deadly  bolt,  had  spread  such  dismay  and 
fright  as  to  disperse  an  army  of  Iroquois  warriors  on  Cham- 
plain's  first  encounter  with  them  when  he  discovered  the 
magnificent  lake  which  bears  his  name,  had  now  become 
familiar  to  the  savages.  It  lost  its  terror  as  a  part  of 
heaven's  artillery  for  those  who  could  themselves  wield  it. 
They  very  soon  became  experts  in  its  use  ;  indeed  they 
taught  the  white  man  how  to  make  it  more  serviceable  in 
forest  warfare,  by  breaking  up  the  lines  of  an  orderly 
military  array,  and  by  skulking  with  it  behind  a  tree  or  a 
bush,  and,  after  its  deadly  aim  had  had  effect,  creeping  or 
crawling  to  another  ambush  to  reload. 


THE  FRENCH  IN  ALABAMA.  283 

When  the  colonists  of  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay, 
after  1620,  began  to  go  on  their  fishing  and  trucking  expe- 
ditions to  the  coast  of  Maine  and  Acadia,  they  too  surrep- 
titiously sold  arms  to  the  Indians  and  entered  into  preca- 
rious covenants  with  them.  Though  the  French  had  been 
at  deadly  feud  with  the  Mohawks,  the  allies  of  the  Dutch, 
they  claimed  the  protectorate  of  the  territory  of  the 
Eastern  Indians,  and  alliance  with  them.  Here,  then, — 
between  the  French  on  the  one  part,  and  the  Dutch  and 
English  on  the  other,  —  began  a  series  of  collisions  in 
rivalry  and  hostility  for  territorial  and  colonial  power,  and 
rights  to  exclusive  traffic  with  the  natives,  which,  prolonged 
for  a  full  century  and  a  half,  closed  in  1763  by  the  English 
conquest  of  Canada.  Several  distinct  periods  in  that  sweep 
of  time  are  historically  designated  by  special  names,  as 
defining  a  particular  war,  —  as,  for  instance,  Queen  Anne's 
War.  But  these  were  only  concentrations  and  culmina- 
tions of  a  never  wholly  intermitted  hostility.  Even  when 
one  or  another  monarch,  or  minister  of  a  foreign  crown, 
proposed  that  the  quarrels  between  their  subjects  at  home 
should  not  be  transferred  to  these  forests,  the  pacific  privi- 
lege was  not  accepted.  Leaving  for  further  notice  these 
complications  between  Europeans  at  the  North,  we  must 
glance  at  the  enterprises  of  the  French  on  other  parts  of 
the  continent. 

Nearly  a  century  and  a  half  after  the  region  had  been 
ravaged  by  De  Soto,  the  French  appeared  in  Alabama,  to 
open  a  new  series  of  European  lessons  in  conquest  and 
cruelty  with  what  remained  there  of  the  Indian  race. 
Marquette  had  floated  down  the  Mississippi  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Arkansas  in  1673,  and  La  Salle  had  descended  to 
the  mouth  of  the  river  in  1682,  taking  possession  in  the 
name  of  the  French  king,  and  returning  to  Canada.  But 
on  his  sea  voyage  for  the  purpose,  three  years  afterwards, 
that  noble  and  intrepid  adventurer,  baffled  in  his  attempt 
to  find  the  mouth  of  the  river  in  the  Gulf,  disembarked 


284          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

on  the  coast  of  Texas.  Soon  after,  in  his  wanderings, 
his  assassination  by  one  of  his  dastard  companions  put 
a  tragic  close  to  the  first  French  attempt  to  colonize 
Louisiana. 

After  the  peace  of  Ryswick,  in  1697,  and  in  spite  of  the 
Spanish  claim,  Iberville  —  one  of  seven  remarkable  broth- 
ers, of  a  Canadian  family  —  renewed  the  effort  in  Loui- 
siana in  1699,  accompanied  by  his  brother  Bienville,  who 
was  governor  of  the  colony  (and  the  actual  founder  of 
Louisiana)  for  forty  years.  He  made'  a  fortification  in 
the  Bay  of  Biloxi,  on  the  Mississippi.  The  enterprise  was 
attended  by  a  continuous  series  of  strifes,  quarrels,  fights, 
and  disasters.  His  men  were  utterly  unwilling  to  perform 
any  labor  of  planting  or  tillage  on  the  land,  even  when  star- 
vation threatened  them  as  the  alternative ;  they  preferred 
to  spend  all  their  time  and  strength  on  their  feuds,  and  on 
venturesome  predatory  roamings.  All  their  supplies  of 
every  kind,  including  most  of  their  food,  were  brought 
from  France.  Such  labor  and  menial  work  as  was  indis- 
pensable was  put  upon  their  abounding  negro  slaves.  The 
region  was  steadily  contested  between  the  French  and  the 
Spaniards.  The  actual  French  settlement  of  Louisiana 
was  made  by  the  French  in  and  around  Mobile,  in  1718. 
The  remnant  of  .the  friendly  tribes,  harassed  and  exhausted 
by  the  havoc  wrought  by  their  successive  tormentors,  came 
much  under  the  influence  of  the  missionary  priests,  and 
became  merged  among  the  Choctaws  and  Chickasaws. 
The  Natchez  Indians,  said  to  have  wandered  from  Mexico, 
had  settled  on  and  around  the  bluff  on  the  Mississippi  that 
bears  their  name.  Here,  in  1729,  they  destroyed  a  French 
garrison,  with  its  red  allies ;  the  incident  being  marked  in 
our  history  as  one  of  those  vengeful  visitations  called,  dis- 
tinctively, massacres,  —  the  title  being  generally  reserved 
for  those  not  rare  experiences  in  which  the  savages  had 
the  mastery.  A  direful  slaughter  attended  the  catastrophe, 
which  was  complete,  except  as  some  of  the  women  and 


THE  FRENCH   IN  LOUISIANA.  285 

children  and  negro  slaves  escaped  its  fury.  So,  by  repe- 
titions of  the  first  and  continuous  methods  of  European 
devastation  on  the  continent,  the  French  enacted  their  his- 
tory. Five  years  after  the  Natchez  massacre,  the  French, 
in  1733,  under  Perrier,  with  Choctaws  for  allies,  took  ven- 
geance for  this  slaughter,  and  broke  the  power  of  the 
Natchez  tribe  by  death  and  devastation.  Four  hundred 
and  twenty-seven  of  the  wretched  savage  survivors  were 
sent  by  Perrier  to  St.  Domingo,  to  be  sold  as  slaves. 

Meanwhile,  after  the  year  1726,  when  Louisiana  began 
to  give  some  signs  of  hope  as  a  colony,  enterprising  and 
dauntless  English  traders,  with  pack-horses  laden  with 
goods,  had  begun  to  penetrate  the  wilderness  from  Caro- 
lina and  Georgia,  driving  a  brisk  traffic  with  the  Chicka- 
saws.  Those  Chickasaws,  in  opposition  to  the  Choctaws, 
had  come  into  alliance  with  the  scattered  fragments  of 
the  Natchez  Indians,  and  harried  the  French.  The  French, 
under  Bienville,  with  their  Choctaw  allies,  made  a  rush 
upon  the  Chickasaws  in  1736,  but  the  Chickasaws  secured 
a  bloody  victory.  By  this  time  the  hostile  rivalry  between 
the  French  and  the  English  for  trade  and  territory  ex- 
tended up  from  Louisiana  to  Ohio,  Virginia,  and  Pennsyl- 
vania. And  so  through  all  these  feuds,  battles,  and  mas- 
sacres, involving  the  Indians  in  the  struggles  between  the 
representatives  of  three  European  nationalities, —  the  Span- 
iards, the  French,  and  the  English,  —  the  natives  felt  the 
iron  scourge  weighing  on  and  crushing  them  alike  from  the 
dealing  of  temporary  friends  and  foes. 

Beginning  then  from  the  first  collision  between  the 
French  and  the  English  colonists  here  down  to  the  Eng- 
lish conquest  of  Canada,  the  Indians  found  themselves 
between  the  upper  and  the  nether  millstone,  either  as  al- 
lies or  foes  of  the  one  or  the  other  European  combatant. 
Nor  did  the  hard  fate  by  which  they  always  suffered,  which- 
ever party  temporarily  prevailed,  find  any  relief  when  the 
English  sway  became  complete  here ;  for  as  we  shall  have 


286  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

full  occasion  to  note,  in  our  own  colonial  war  with  Great 
Britain  the  same  crushing  power  of  fate  did  not  make  the 
Indians  umpires  in  the  struggle,  but  simply  victims.  We 
give  full  credit  to  the  natives,  if  not  for  skill,  yet  for  ability, 
cunning,  and  ferocity,  in  the  great  art  of  warfare  before 
they  had  known  any  white  foes.  But  it  seems  as  if  they 
must  have  learned  something  from  their  training  under 
their  new  enemies.  They  certainly  did  learn  that  they 
had  no  monopoly  of  that  class  of  passions  which  infuriate 
combatants  and  inspire  guile,  treachery,  and  breaches  of 
the  most  solemn  covenants.  In  the  Old  World,  in  the 
most  embittered  wars  between  Christians,  some  arrests 
and  recognitions  of  what  stood  for  humanity  were  coming 
to  assert  themselves  as  promising  to  introduce  rules  for 
what  is  called  civilized  warfare.  Such  rules  have  never 
yet  crossed  the  sea  to  be  of  service  to  our  natives. 

We  pause  at  this  point  in  the  rehearsal  of  only  painful 
and  shocking  deeds,  to  reflect  upon  a  fact  which  must  for- 
cibly present  itself  to  one  who,  in  reviewing  the  strife  of 
European  nationalities  on  this  continent,  contemplates  the 
distribution  of  the  awards  from  it. 

The  pages  of  human  history  and  fortunes  on  the  scenes 
of  this  distracted  world  present  to  us  many  conclusions 
and  results  in  the  struggles  for  the  greater  prizes  of  empire 
which  violate  our  highest  conceptions  of  right,  our  judgment 
of  what  ought  to  have  been.  And  perhaps  the  most  signal 
instance  of  the  seemingly  inequitable  disposal  of  the  great 
issues  of  policy  among  nations  is  the  significant  fact,  that 
France,  either  as  empire  or  republic,  has  not  now  any  terri- 
torial foothold  on  this  continent ;  nor  indeed  any  memorial 
of  her  old  colonial  enterprise  and  .sway,  save  in  the  names 
borne  by  lakes  and  rivers,  forts  and  missions,  cataracts  and 
portages,  in  the  regions  of  her  wilderness  heroism,  and  in  the 
mixture  of  her  blood  and  lineage  in  the  descendants  of  nearly 
every  aboriginal  tribe.  The  allotments  of  fortune,  or  the 
fatuity  of  destiny,  or  the  arbitrament  of  treaties  built  upon 


FRENCH  CLAIMS  TO  THIS  CONTINENT.         287 

the  issues  of  battles,  have  extinguished  upon  this  vast  conti- 
nent every  territorial  right  of  the  Frenchman.  There  is  in 
existence  a  map  of  New  France,  engraved  by  the  French 
king's  cartographer,  on  which  a  very  considerable  portion 
of  our  present  national  domain  is  included  under  that  com- 
placent title,  while  the  English  colonies  are  crowded  into 
a  narrow  seaboard  strip.  The  more  than  complete  inver- 
sion of  those  inscribed  titles  which  appear  on  every  map 
engraved  for  more  than  a  century  past,  presents  a  theme 
over  which  we  can  but  deeply  moralize.  We  call  up  the 
image  of  the  dauntless  and  generous-hearted  Champlain, 
planning  for  an  empire  for  his  beloved  France  over  these 
unmeasured  ranges  of  lands,  rivers,  and  inland  seas.  We 
note  how  in  his  journals  and  on  his  maps  he  attaches  a 
name  from  his  mother  tongue  to  every  natural  object 
and  phenomenon  in  his  course,  —  bay,  island,  promontory, 
creek,  or  inlet,  cascade,  carrying-place,  or  camping-ground, 
level  or  swell  of  land,  —  and  sometimes  a  word  or  phrase 
drawn  from  the  quiet  or  the  conflict  of  his  experience  for 
the  moment.  Happily  many  of  these  names  are  retained 
to  secure  fragments  of  history  by  their  associations.  We 
follow  the  weariful  but  ever-patient  trampings  of  the  mis- 
sionary with  only  red  companions,  learning  from  them 
their  own  names  of  places,  and  entering  them  with  a 
French  alias  in  his  memory  or  his  notes.  We  accompany 
in  thought  those  intrepid  and  agile  coureurs  de  bois,  pene- 
trating the  deepest  wilds,  in  absences  of  years  from  their 
own  kin  and  fellows.  They  bore  with  them  remembrances 
of  their  village  life  and  sports  in  their  ever  dear  old  home, 
and  left  many  of  its  words  and  phrases  as  their  own  epi- 
taphs or  legacies.  These  French  names  and  epithets  keep 
watch  only  over  the  shadows  of  the  past. 

On  three  grounds,  each  of  them  obvious  and  strong  in 
reason  and  validity,  France  might  advance  claims  for  per- 
manent and  representative  rule  on  this  continent,  beyond 
those  of  English  nationality  now  in  possession. 


288  THE   FRENCH   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

1.  French  adventure  and  enterprise  had  precedence  in 
the  actual  colonization  of  the  northern  half  of  this  conti- 
nent.    Spain  was  long  content  with  conquest  without  col- 
onization.    She  has  in  Mexico  and  in  South  America  all 
that  can  be  said  to  be  rightfully  hers  in  the  perpetuation 
of  her  language,  in  exclusive  privileges  of  commerce,  in  the 
mixture  of  Spanish  with  native  blood,  and  in  the  still  effec- 
tive, though  strained  and  fretting,  ties  of  traditional  loy- 
alty recognized  by  her  transatlantic  subjects  on  main  and 
island.     But  France  had  won  something  more  than  these, 
and  has  less,  indeed  nothing,  here.     Her  navigators  had 
given  her  the  basis  of   what  was  then  a  rightful  claim, 
in  discovery.     This  was  followed  by  actual  occupancy,  al- 
most simultaneously,  of  the  Peninsula  of  Florida,  of  the 
bays,  islands,  and  shores  of  Acadia,  of  the  St.  Lawrence, 
of  Canada,  and  afterwards  of  Louisiana  and  Mississippi. 
From  the  moment  France  had  her  foothold  on  our  soil, 
there  began  in  her  interest  that  marvellously  romantic  and 
heroic  work  of  exploration,  discovery,  and  description  of  the 
features  and  scenes  of  this  continent  which  made  the  title 
of  New  France  as  justly  applicable  to  the  whole  of  it  as  that 
of  New  England  was  to  a  small  section  of  it.     And  this 
work  of  French  colonization  and  exploration  was  pursued, 
not  by  the  scant  resources  and  ventures  of  a  few  expatri- 
ated outlaws  and  exiles,  but  under  the  patronage  of  one  of 
the  greatest  of  monarchs,  through  his  ministers  and  vice- 
roys, with  the  outlays  and  vigorous  energies  of  the  nobles 
of  the  realm,  and  the  mighty  prestige  and  the  benediction 
of  the   Church,  through  Pope  and  cardinals,  priests  and 
missionaries. 

2.  A  century  and  a  half  ago,  France  —  though  from  fun- 
damental mistakes  in  policy  she  had  not  strengthened  herself 
in  numbers,  nor  in  the  sure  hold  of  the  soil  which  comes 
from  its  improvement  by  agriculture  and  by  industry  —  had 
actual  possession  of  the  inner  strongholds  of  this  conti- 
nent.    A  line  of  forts,  with  mission  chapels  and  trading 


THE  FRENCH  AS  EXPLORERS.  289 

posts,  stretched  along  the  strategic  points  on  the  great 
lakes  and  at  the  confluence  of  the  first  series  of  large 
rivers  beyond  the  Alleghanies.  Marquette  had  discovered 
the  Mississippi,  and  La  Salle  had  traced  it  to  the  salt  sea. 
A  Frenchman  was  the  first  white  man  to  thread  his  way 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains.  These  lakes  and  posts  had  for 
the  most  part  been  occupied  by  the  consent,  or  at  least 
the  tolerance,  of  the  natives,  because  they  supposed  that  the 
convenience  and  benefit  of  them  as  trading  or  mission 
stations  were  shared  by  both  races.  In  strength  of  muscle, 
in  the  strain  upon  endurance,  by  which  the  implements  for 
building  and  defence  were  introduced  into  these  depths  of 
the  primeval  wilderness,  was  exacted  harder  toil  from  the 
French  than  the  English  colonists  expended  at  contempo- 
rary periods  of  their  enterprises.  As  soon  as  the  English 
by  the  fortune  of  war  afterwards  got  possession  of  these 
strongholds,  they  obliterated  the  names  given  by  their  pre- 
decessors. Indeed  we  might  say,  that,  up  to  the  period 
of  our  Revolutionary  war,  the  English  colonists  on  the 
seaboard  had  done  scarce  anything  in  the  severer  enter- 
prises of  exploration.  They  had,  so  to  speak,  used  the 
French  trails,  and  had  the  benefit  in  many  ways  of  that 
experience  won  by  others  which  is  so  much  cheaper,  and 
often  more  valuable,  than  that  won  by  ourselves.  The 
moment  now  that  the  modern  traveller  gets  beyond  the 
first  ranges  of  our  Western  valleys  and  mountains,  air 
and  earth  and  water,  history  and  tradition,  are  redolent 
of  the  memories  of  explorers  and  adventurers  who  called 
the  monarch  of  France  their  sovereign. 

All  this  toil  and  task-work  of  exploration  and  discovery, 
pursued  by  dauntless  and  intrepid  men,  —  men  whose  life 
began  in  the  luxuries  of  courts,  and  who  yet  proved  them- 
selves equal  to  an  almost  superhuman  effort  and  endur- 
ance,— was  undergone  for  a  purpose :  it  was  in  the  service 
of  their  beloved  France,  her  adored  glory  and  sanctity  as 
a  servant  of  the  Church.  If  a  passing  glance  of  a  coast- 

19 


290  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

line  of  a  country  which  has  had  no  place  on  a  seaman's 
chart,  establishes  by  the  law  of  nations  the  right  of  dis- 
covery, and  so  of  possession,  for  the  monarch  from  one  of 
whose  ports  the  vessel  sailed  bearing  the  navigator  who 
caught  that  glance,  what  shall  we  say  of  rights  and  claims 
assured  by  early  and  continued  French  enterprise  on  this 
continent  ?  While  the  levity  and  hilarity  of  spirit  which 
characterize  that  people,  and  the  easy  abandon  of  their 
morals  in  the  temptations  of  a  wilderness,  may  have  light- 
ened and  cheered  their  ventures  of  exploration,  some  stiffer 
sinews,  some  firmer  fibres,  some  loftier  pitch  of  spirit  were 
needed  by  them  in  that  perilous  work.  They  had  at  least 
leaders  of  a  dauntless  heroism,  of  pluck,  energy,  and  en- 
durance unmatched  in  adventure.  I  would  include  the 
French  with  the  Indians,  as  having  been  spoiled  of  their 
inheritance  here. 

3.  But  what  is  more  directly  to  our  purpose,  in  our 
theme  of  the  red  man  in  his  relations  with  Europeans  on 
this  continent,  is  to  note  the  paramount  claim  of  France, 
through  her  colonists  here,  to  sway  and  influence  over  the 
savages.  It  is  but  fair,  and  fully  conformed  to  historic 
truth,  to  say  that  of  all  the  colonists  who  entered  the  New 
World,  for  whatever  ends  involving  trespass  upon  or  dis- 
possession of  the  native  tribes,  Frenchmen  were  the  most 
friendly,  the  most  serviceable,  and,  we  may  add,  the  most 
just  toward  them.  Of  course,  in  affirming  this  we  may 
still  recall  with  all  their  aggravations  the  fierce  and  bitter 
wars  with  the  Indians,  the  raids  and  devastations  and  mas- 
sacres which  so  deeply  stain  with  woe  and  horror  the  do- 
minion of  New  France  in  America.  The  French  brought 
many  miseries  upon  tribes  which  they  could  not  win  to 
friendship ;  and  they  aggravated  the  darkest  and  direst 
penalties  visited  upon  their  allied  tribes  by  subjecting  them 
to  the  common  vengeance  of  the  English  as  being  the 
bloody  tools  of  their  rivals.  But,  notwithstanding  this, 
France  might  claim  to-day  a  hold  upon  some  of  this  terri- 


VOYAGEURS   AND    COUREURS   DE   BOIS.  291 

tory  simply  on  the  ground  of  kinder,  more  sympathiz- 
ing, and,  so  to  speak,  more  wise  and  reasonable  courses 
in  her  treatment  of  the  savages.  Indeed,  her  influence 
does  survive  through  her  old  affiliations  with  them.  The 
history  of  French  enterprise  and  adventure  on  this  conti- 
nent draws  some  of  its  most  romantic  and  picturesque 
elements  for  narrative  and  for  quiet  musing  from  the  men 
already  referred  to  under  the  titles  of  "Voyageurs"  and 
"  Coureurs  de  Bois."  Often  they  were  identical  in  traits, 
character,  and  habits.  For  whoever  had  the  inclination, 
skill,  and  other  qualities  for  one  of  these  capacities  could 
easily  conform  himself  to  the  other.  So  far  as  the  charac- 
ters were  distinguishable,  the  voyageur  might  be  regarded 
as  the  expert  in  canoe  navigation,  while  the  coureur  found 
his  principal  occupation  in  coursing  the  wilderness.  The 
voyageur  was  commonly  in  the  employ  of  some  association 
of  traders  or  individual  traders.  The  coureur  de  bois  acted 
on  his  own  account.  The  same  person  often  combined  both 
characters.  How  readily  a  large  number  of  a  large  class, 
too,  of  Frenchmen  took  to  these  airy,  free,  and  hazardous 
ways  of  spending  their  existence,  and  how  soon  they  became 
adepts  and  experts  in  their  wild  life,  needs  no  comment  here. 
They  took  Indian  wives,  at  their  discretion  or  ability  to  pay 
for  them.  They  have  left  behind  them  a  numerous  pro- 
geny of  half-breeds,  who,  while  sometimes  troublesome,  have 
proved  largely  serviceable  to  hunting  and  trapping  parties  of 
whites,  to  private  and  Government  explorers,  and  officers 
at  our  posts,  as  scouts  and  interpreters,  and  as  needful 
go-betweens  for  the  two  races.  They  led  a  reckless  and 
lawless  life,  often  with  dubious  loyalty  to  either  party. 
They  ministered  to  the  Indian's  passion  for  strong  drink. 
They  became  often  so  troublesome,  intractable,  and  law- 
less in  their  occasional  returns  to  civilized  spots,  and  in 
their  bad  influence  over  the  natives,  that  the  local  and 
foreign  governments  made  many  though  always  vain  efforts 
to  restrain  and  suppress  them.  The  historian  Chaiievoix 


292  THE   FRENCH   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

covers  the  whole  truth,  and  its  explanation  too,  in  this 
frank  statement:  "The  savages  did  not  become  French, 
but  the  French  became  savages." 

There  was  a  root  difference,  complete  and  characteristic 
in  all  its  workings  and  manifestations,  between  the  ways  in 
which  the  English  and  the  French  felt  towards  the  Indians, 
looked  upon,  and  treated  them.  On  being  brought  into  re- 
lations either  friendly  or  hostile  with  the  savages,  the  Eng- 
lish felt  for  them  dislike,  contempt,  loathing  even;  and 
they  seldom  took  the  pains  to  conceal  these  feelings.  At 
any  rate  the  Indians  needed  not  to  exercise  their  keener 
penetration  to  become  perfectly  aware  that  their  treat- 
ment by  the  English  was  characterized  not  only  by  a  show 
and  assumption  of  superiority,  but  by  disdain  and  hauteur. 
There  was  a  line  which  the  English  never  allowed  to  be 
crossed,  or  even  blurred,  between  them  and  the  savage, — 
the  line  which  forbade  real  intimacy,  or  any  concession 
of  familiarity  on  equal  terms.  Roger  Williams  and  the 
Apostle  Eliot  may  be  said  in  the  full  sincerity  of  their 
hearts,  in  pity,  sympathetic  yearnings,  and  heroic,  patient, 
devoted  efforts  for  the  redemption  and  welfare  of  the  In- 
dians, to  have  exceeded  all  Englishmen ;  but  their  own 
avowals  are  evidence  that  their  English  stomachs,  as  they 
said,  loathed  the  habits  and  the  viands  of  the  savage. 

It  would  be  difficult  in  one  single  point  of  unlikeness  or 
contrast  to  offer  a  more  striking  illustration  of  the  variance 
of  tastes,  temperaments,  scruples,  and  other  natural  pro- 
clivities distinguishing  the  Frenchman  and  the  English- 
man, as  exhibited  here  more  than  two  centuries  ago,  than 
in  this  matter  of  affiliating  with  or  loathing  the  Indian. 
Nor  did  the  difference  lie  in  the  fact  merely  that  the  former 
pitied  the  Indian  for  his  heathenism  and  the  latter,  did  not. 
Both  agreed  in  acknowledging  that  deplorable  condition 
and  exposure  of  the  natives,  though  the  Englishman's 
method  of  securing  them  deliverance  from  it,  even  if  he 
thought  it  worth  the  while,  was  more  difficult  and  exact- 


FRENCHMEN   BECOMING  INDIANS.  293 

ing  than  that  of  the  Frenchman.  But  antipathy,  disgust, 
absolute  contempt  for — and  if  there  be  any  stronger  word 
for  expressing  the  feeling  —  repelled  the  Englishman  from 
the  Indian ;  while  the  Frenchman,  in  an  easy,  tolerant,  rol- 
licking, or  even  in  an  affectedly  sympathizing  way,  "  took 
to  "  his  red  companion.  The  whole  contrast  is  presented 
by  setting  before  the  imagination  two  pictures,  strictly 
drawn  to  the  fact.  One  gives  us  the  Jesuit  priest  (and 
he  was  not  in  this  distinguished  by  his  religious  character 
from  his  countrymen)  occupying  the  same  filthy  lodge, 
sleeping  on  the  same  flea-infested  skins,  and  ladling  out 
his  abominable  dinner  from  the  same  caldron  with  a  whole 
family  of  humanity  and  dogs.  The  other  picture  shows  us 
the  careful  wife  of  the  Apostle  Eliot  doing  up  for  him  a 
wallet  of  clean,  however  frugal  food,  as  he  mounted  his 
horse  for  his  eighteen  miles'  ride  to  Natick,  where  when 
hungry  he  ate  it  in  his  own  private  sitting  and  sleeping 
apartment  in  a  loft  of  the  Indian  meeting-house. 

But  the  French  really  assimilated  with  the  Indians,  nei- 
ther raising  nor  recognizing  any  barrier  of  race,  habit,  or 
antipathy  between  them.  They  even  seem  to  a  large  ex- 
tent to  have  been  actually  attracted  to  and  won  over  by  the 
features  of  the  wild  life,  and  the  wild  free  ways  of  those 
who  led  it.  The  easy  adoption  of  this  kind  of  life  by  vast 
numbers  of  Frenchmen,  including  daily  habits,  dress,  food 
and  the  revolting  ways  of  preparing  it,  love  of  roving  and 
adventure  in  hunting  and  trapping,  ability  and  endurance 
in  rough  and  daring  enterprise  and  exposure,  —  all  goes  to 
prove  that  this  assimilation  with  savagery  was  of  natural 
prompting  and  proclivity.  There  were  charms  and  joys  for 
thousands  of  the  light-hearted,  pliable,  and  reckless  rovers 
from  old  France  — its  peasants,  its  soldiers,  its  convicts  and 
criminals,  and  none  the  less  for  its  nobles  and  courtiers  — 
in  the  range  and  lawlessness  and  wild  indulgences  of  their 
forest  companions.  Of  course  the  savages  heartily  re- 
sponded to  and  genially  accepted  all  this  accordancy  and 


294  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

abandon  of  their  once  civilized  visitors.  The  French  thus 
from  the  first  won  an  influence  over  their  savage  intimates 
which  the  English  never  in  the  slightest  degree  attained, 
nor  even  seem  to  have  desired  to  win.  I  have  noticed 
many  slight  but  most  significant  tokens  of  the  fact,  that, 
when  in  some  occasionally  critical  emergencies  it  was  quite 
important  for  the  English  to  conciliate  or  draw  into  action 
with  them  any  one  conspicuous  individual,  party,  or  tribe 
of  the  Indians,  the  work  was  set  about  in  a  blundering,  dic- 
tatory,  or  harsh  way,  which  would  seem  likely  to  defeat  the 
object  aimed  for.  "  Brothers,"  or  "  Children,"  was  the  term 
constantly  on  the  lips  of  the  French  in  addressing  the  na- 
tives. I  do  not  find  the  words  as  ever  employed  by  the 
Puritan  fathers  of  New  England.  The  French  priests  were 
always  more  than  willing  to  unite  a  Frenchman  and  an  In- 
dian woman  in  Christian  wedlock.  I  cannot  conceive  that 
John  Eliot  would  have  approved  or  sanctioned  the  relation 
between  one  of  his  own  countrymen  and  the  most  pious 
woman  among  his  native  converts.  The  few  lingering  rem- 
nants of  the  old  tribes  in  New  England  are  all  of  them  of 
blood  mixed  from  the  African.  Not  many,  if  indeed  any, 
specimens  of  this  mixture  could  be  found  among  the  half- 
breeds  of  the  North  and  the  West.  Had  it  ever  been  desir- 
able or  likely  that  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  two  races 
on  this  continent  should  have  been  sought  or  found  in  their 
assimilation,  the  French  would  have  been  the  most  likely 
medium  for  securing  the  result.  They  had,  indeed,  made 
considerable  progress  towards  it,  and  many  every  way  re- 
spectable and  flourishing  families  in  Canada  and  the  Red 
River  region  attest  its  degree  of  success. 

If  ever,  in  any  case  under  the  stress  of  circumstances 
and  exigencies,  the  French  felt  a  distrust  or  dread  of  the 
Indians,  or  were  watchful  of  their  craft  and  treachery,  they 
took  pains  to  conceal  all  tokens  of  the  sort.  When  strol- 
ling Indians  or  chiefs  on  business  errands  visited  the 
French  trading-posts  or  forts,  they  were  made  much  of; 


TRADERS   IN   CANADA.  295 

they  were  allowed  to  strut  with  full  complacency  in  their 
forest  bravery  and  toggery ;  their  conceit  and  dignity  were 
not  reduced;  the  meal,  the  camp-fire,  and  the  bed  were 
shared  with  them  on  a  footing  of  perfect  equality;  they 
were  cajoled  and  feasted;  and,  coming  and  going,  were 
greeted  with  military  salutes,  as  princely  visitors.  Quite 
otherwise  was  it  between  the  English  and  the  Indians :  the 
distance,  often  wide  and  deep  in  reserve,  was  never  over- 
come. By  this  natural  —  and  if  at  some  times  assumed 
—  assimilation  with  the  natives,  the  French  won  a  vast 
prestige  with  them.  On  a  signal  occasion  the  French  Gov- 
ernor Frontenac,  much  to  the  admiration  of  his  barbarous 
spectators  and  friends,  put  himself  in  Indian  array,  feath- 
ered, greased,  and  painted,  while  he  howled  and  yelled 
and  gesticulated  in  the  war-dance  in  rivalry  of  any  native 
braves.  He  has  an  extraordinarily  daring  imagination  who 
can  present  to  himself  a  sober  governor  of  any  New  Eng- 
land colony  in  that  guise.  Sir  William  Johnson,  the  British 
Indian  Agent,  said,  however,  that  on  some  occasions  he  had 
worn  their  garb. 

The  representatives  of  France  among  our  Indian  tribes 
from  her  earliest  enterprises  on  the  continent  were  com- 
posed of  three  classes,  —  priests,  fur-traders,  and  sol- 
diers ;  but  little  account  being  made  of  colonists,  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  word,  as  planters,  attaching  themselves  to 
spaces  of  cleared  land,  from  which  they  intended  to  draw 
their  full  subsistence.  The  soldiers  are  no  longer  here, 
though  they  hold  such  a  place  in  the  history  of  the  con- 
tests for  rival  empire  on  the  continent.  The  priests  and 
the  fur-traders  have  kept  themselves  in  living  activity, 
though  with  a  wasting  and  less  significant  hold  and  range 
in  the  developments  of  the  last  century. 

The  traffic  of  the  traders  in  Canada  —  distinguishing 
them  from  those  in  Acadia  and  off  the  coast  as  fishermen  — 
was  almost  exclusively  confined  to  peltry.  The  trade  was 
a  source  of  constant  vexation,  annoyance,  rivalry,  and  quar- 


296          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

relling  among  the  adventurers  and  settlers.  A  monopoly 
of  it  had  been  given  successively  to  different  individuals, 
who  utterly  failed  to  secure  its  privileges.  Then  a  joint 
company  of  adventurers  sought  to  control  it  by  a  partner- 
ship in  expenses  and  profits.  But  they  were  openly  defied 
by  single  persons,  whose  common  plunderings  interested 
them  so  strongly  that  they  had  substantially  the  influence 
of  a  banded  fellowship  acting  without  a  charter.  In  the 
spring  or  early  summer  the  Indians,  from  the  far-off  scenes 
where  they  had  been  patiently  gathering  the  coveted  peltry, 
would  congregate  in  clamorous  hordes  near  Montreal  with 
their  laden  canoes,  to  barter  their  cargoes.  Scenes  of  blood, 
of  riot,  and  of  drunkenness  ensued,  and  the  once  quiet  wil- 
derness heard  every  sound  of  a  Babel  of  tongues  vociferous 
in  passion  and  imprecations.  This  bartering  of  the  cover- 
ings of  animals  for  the  lives  of  men,  skin  for  skin,  was 
beyond  measure  demoralizing.  Soon  the  most  dauntless 
of  the  French  would  stroll  off,  alone  or  in  couples,  to  dis- 
tant beaver  dams  and  forest  treasuries,  or  rival  traders 
would  waylay  an  incoming  party  and  anticipate  the  regu- 
lar market.  The  brandy  traffic,  too,  flourished  with  a  vigor 
that  defied  police,  military,  and  spiritual  threats  and  pro- 
hibitions. 

It  might  be  debated  whether  such  sway  as  France  once 
had  here  should  in  its  predominance  be  assigned  to  the 
priests  or  the  traders.  Repeatedly  and  emphatically  was 
it  affirmed  by  the  principal  promoters  of  the  first  coloniz- 
ing of  New  England,  that  the  chief  and  paramount  end  of 
their  coming  hither  was  religion.  By  their  own  interpre- 
tation of  the  scope  of  their  meaning,  we  understand  them 
to  have  included  in  this  avowal  the  enjoyment  of  their 
own  religion  and  the  conversion  to  it  of  the  heathen  tribes. 
But  practically  viewed,  the  relative  place  of  interest  which 
the  religious  prompting  proved  to  have,  in  comparison  with 
mundane  schemes  of  thrift,  trade,  and  commerce,  will  de- 
pend upon  the  severity  or  the  leniency  of  the  judgment 


CATHOLICS  AND   HUGUENOTS.  297 

which  we  visit  upon  the  New  England  colonists.  No  can- 
did student  of  our  history,  however,  can  fail  to  allow  and 
affirm  that  the  founders  of  New  France  in  America,  in 
their  zeal  and  heroic  toil  and  endurance  for  the  conversion 
of  the  savages,  present  us  on  the  records  examples  of  noble- 
ness and  devotion  which  Puritan  history  cannot  parallel. 
True,  the  words  "religion"  and  "conversion"  signified  very 
different  things  —  in  substance,  in  processes,  in  methods, 
in  tests,  and  results — to  the  Puritan  and  the  Jesuit;  and 
it  is  no  breach  of  charity  to  say  that  the  Jesuit  was  fully 
satisfied  with  tokens  of  success  which  the  Puritan  re- 
garded as  utterly  insignificant,  and  even  mockingly  futile 
and  false.  We  may  but  incidentally  anticipate  here  a  sub- 
ject which  will  later  engage  a  chapter  in  this  volume,  in 
an  examination  of  the  priestly  and  Protestant  aims, 
methods,  and  results  in  the  attempts  for  Christianizing  the 
Indians.  The  Jesuits  present  themselves  for  brief  notice 
at  this  point  as  one  of  the  three  first  representatives  of 
France  in  the  New  World.  The  Jesuit's  method  was  by 
ritual,  with  an  altar,  however  rude,  with  scenic  demonstra- 
tions, a  procession  in  the  woods  following  the  cross,  if  but 
just  cut  from  the  forest,  and  graced  by  a  flock  of  naked 
savages  bearing  their  bayberry  torches.  The  Puritan's 
method  was  by  doctrine,  —  a  body  of  divinity,  didactic 
teaching,  and  experimental  cases  of  conscience.  The  good 
Apostle  Eliot  put  the  Indian  vocabulary  to  a  severe  strain 
in  opening  to  them  high  Calvinism, — with  adoption,  elec- 
tion, reprobation,  justification,  etc.  But  the  Jesuits  were 
not  the  first  of  the  Roman  priesthood  in  New  France. 

The  measures  for  the  introduction  into  New  France  of 
religion  and  its  missionaries,  to  secure  the  avowed  object 
of  the  conversion  of  the  savages^  were  at  first  wholly  lack- 
ing in  zeal,  and  were  soon  sadly  complicated  by  the  mix- 
ture of  Catholics  and  Huguenots,  alike  worldly  in  their 
enterprises,  and  by  rivalries  between  the  Franciscan  and 
Jesuit  orders.  Father  Gabriel  Sagard,  a  Recollet,  of  the 


298          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

Franciscan  Friars,  is  the  faithful  historian  of  the  struggles 
and  contentions  involved  in  this  missionary  work.1  The 
editor  of  Sagard  says  it  was  difficult  to  quicken  any  zeal 
for  the  work  in  France.  He  makes  light  of  the  assump- 
tion of  the  Pope  in  giving  over  the  whole  continent  to 
the  Spaniards  and  the  Portuguese,  and  thinks  the  Papal 
oracle  as  absurd  as  if  it  had  affirmed  that  America  did 
not  exist,  and  had  excommunicated  any  one  who  might 
say  that  the  earth  had  two  hemispheres.  The  editor  also 
quotes  the  "  fine  raillery "  of  Francis  I.  about  these  grasp- 
ing claimants:  "Eh,  how  is  this?  They  quietly  divide 
between  them  the  whole  of  America,  without  allowing  me 
to  share  in  it  as  their  brother. .  I  wish  much  to  see  the 
item  in  Adam's  testament  which  bequeaths  them  this  vast 
heritage." 2  The  Huguenot  Sieur  De  Monts,  while  the 
patent  for  Acadia  was  in  his  hands,  brought  over  with  him 
in  1604  a  minister  and  a  priest,  besides  a  miscellaneous 
company  of  convicts  and  ruffians,  the  sweepings  of  the 
prisons  and  purlieus.  The  two  divines  not  only  quarrelled 
in  their  arguments,  but  came  to  fisticuffs.  Sagard  tells  us 
that  soon  after  coming  to  land  they  both  died,  near  the 
same  time,  and  that  the  sailors,  who  buried  them  in  a 
common  grave,  wondered  if,  having  been  in  such  strife  in 
life,  they  could  lie  peacefully  together  in  the  pit.3 

Two  Jesuit  priests  came  to  Acadia  in  1611,  but  did  not 
long  remain.  One  of  them,  Father  Biard,  was  taken  with 
Saussaye  in  Argall's  raid  at  Mt.  Desert.  He  narrowly 
escaped  the  halter  in  Virginia,  and  the  being  thrown  over- 
board off  the  Azores,  lest  he  should  betray  there  to  the 
Catholic  authorities  the  deeds  of  his  Protestant  captors. 
But  he  was  snugly  hidden  under  deck  while  the  vessel  was 
searched,  and  getting  bacfc  to  France  might  have  resumed 

1  Histoire  du  Canada,  et  Voyages  que  les  Freres  Mineurs  Recollets  y  ont 
faits  pour  la  conversion  des  Infideles,  depuis  1'An  1615  :  par  Gabriel  Sagard 
Deodat.     Ed.  par  H.  E"mile  Chevalier.     Paris,  1866. 

2  Vol.  i.p.  xi.  3  yol.  j.  p>  26. 


RE"COLLETS  IN   CANADA.  299 

his  professorship  of  theology  at  Lyons.  The  other  Acadian 
Jesuit,  Father  Enemond  Masse,  was  afterwards  a  mission- 
ary in  Canada.  The  first  missionaries  to  Canada  were  four 
of  the  Franciscan  friars  who  arrived  in  Quebec  in  May, 
1615.  Sagard  is  their  faithful  eulogian.  His  last  editor 
reflects  on  the  Jesuit  historians  Garneau  and  Charlevoix 
for  their  neglect  and  light  esteem  of  Sagard's  work.  The 
friars  appeared  in  their  monkish  garb  of  rope-girdled  and 
hooded  robes,  and  bare  feet  shod  with  heavy  wooden  san- 
dals, —  not  a  very  fitting  foot-gear  for  the  egg-shell  canoes 
in  which  they  were  to  pass  to  their  missions.  They  cele- 
brated the  first  mass  in  Canada  on  June  25,  1615,  in  a 
little  chapel  which  they  .built  at  Quebec.  The  first  burial 
there  with  holy  rites  Sagard  records  as  that  of  "  Michel 
Colin,"  March  24,  1616.  One  of  the  friars,  Father  Dol- 
beau,  went  with  a  band  of  the  Montagnais  up  the  Saguenay 
in  December.  Reduced,  after  two  months,  near  to  blind- 
ness and  much  agony  from  the  smoke  of  the  filthy  lodges, 
he  prudently  judged,  says  Sagard,  that  our  Lord  did  not 
require  of  him  the  loss  of  his  sight,  but  that  he  ought  care- 
fully to  guard  what  was  so  essential  to  him  for  his  great 
enterprise.1  Another  of  the  brethren,  Father  Le  Caron, 
bravely  accompanied  a  band  of  Hurons  returning  up  the 
Ottawa,  from  their  voyage  down  with  furs  to  Montreal. 
He  wisely  had  a  lodge  of  his  own  on  the  outskirts  of  their 
village,  where  he  wintered.  He  celebrated  the  first  mass 
there  Aug.  12,  1615.  He  wrote  frankly  to  a  friend  of  all 
the  disagreeables,  the  disgusts,  and  terrible  hardships  of 
his  new  mode  of  life.  But  he  cheerily  adds :  "  Abundant 
consolation  I.  found  under  all  my  troubles  ;  for  when  one 
sees  so  many  infidels  needing  nothing  but  a  drop  of  water 
to  make  them  children  of  God,  he  feels  an  inexpressible 
ardor  to  labor  for  their  conversion,  and  sacrifice  to  it  his 
repose  and  his  life."  2 

1  Sagard,  vol.  i.  p.  40. 

2  Parkman:  Pioneers,  etc.,  p.  364. 


300          THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

Sagard  was  himself  a  missionary  for  many  years  among 
the  Hurons ;  and,  besides  a  Dictionary  of  their  language, 
he  wrote  a  very  interesting  book  upon  the  country  and  its 
people.1 

He  seems  to  have  been  a  guileless  and  simple-hearted 
man,  homesick  at  times,  but  zealous  in  his  work.  His 
credulity  was  extreme,  and  he  was  greatly  disturbed  by  the 
demoniacal  vaporings  and  tricks  which  were  thought  to 
infest  the  land  and  the  people.  He  was  adopted  by  an  In- 
dian family,  and  was  finally  reconciled  to  make  his  prin- 
cipal food  of  sagamite,  the  Indian  maize. 

The  mission  of  the  Recollets  was  superseded  by  the 
coming  of  Jesuit  Fathers  to  Canada  in  1625.  Henceforth 
none  but  faithful  disciples  of  the  Roman  Church  were  to  be 
allowed  to  abide  there. 

As  a  reader  of  the  sources  of  history  for  the  time  and 
place  muses  over  the  record,  he  pauses  to  ask  whether 
these  spiritual  guides  found  their  own  countrymen  or  the 
savages  the  more  tractable  and  hopeful  subjects  of  their 
ghostly  charge.  A  rough  set  alike  they  were  for  such  over- 
sight. One  contrasts  in  thought  and  fancy  the  work  of 
teaching  and  discipline  there  with  that  contemporaneously 
going  on  in  the  meeting-houses  and  homes  of  the  New  Eng- 
land Puritans.  We  may  be  sure  that  the  Canadian  was  far 
lighter  and  most  easy  where  that  of  the  Puritans  was  most 
austere  and  grim  ;  yet  what  verdict  has  time  and  trial  set 
upon  the  long  results  of  the  two  methods!  The  whole 
influence  and  example  of  Champlain  and  of  a  few  devout 
men  and  women  were  given  to  encourage  the  priests  within 
their  own  holy  functions.  But  they  had  a  restive,  wild, 
and  unregenerate  crew  around  them,  and  it  was  not  easy  to 
bring  them  even  to  outward  reverence  for  the  ritual.  Oc- 
casionally, after  years  of  lawless  and  wholly  ungirt  roaming 

1  Le  Grand  Voyage  du  pays  des  Hurons,  situe  en  1'Amerique  vers  la  Mer 
douce,  es  derniers  confins  de  la  nouvelle  France,  dite  Canada,  etc.  A  Paris, 
1632. 


FRENCH   HALF-BREEDS.  301 

in  the  wilderness,  a  coureur  de  bois  or  a  voyageur,  under 
some  prickings  of  conscience,  would  come  into  the  settle- 
ment that  he  might  obtain  shriving,  at  least  for  the  past. 
If  he  made  a  clean  breast  of  it,  a  guileless-hearted  priest 
must  have  felt  a  heavier  burden  lying  upon  him  than  that 
which  the  penitent  hoped  to  throw  off. 

A  more  favorable  character  is  given  by  a  good  authority 
of  some  of  the  descendants  of  this  race  of  men.  The  Earl 
of  Dufferin,  late  Governor-General  of  Canada,  on  his  return 
way  from  his  interesting  overland  visit  to  British  Columbia, 
in  September,  1877,  in  addressing  a  meeting  at  Winnipeg, 
made  the  following  laudatory  reference  to  this  class  of  men, 
of  whose  character  and  influence  he  had  had  opportunities 
of  observation  :  — 

"  There  is  no  doubt  that  a  great  deal  of  the  good  feeling  subsist- 
ing between  the  red  men  and  ourselves  is  due  to  the  influence  and 
interposition  of  that  invaluable  class  of  men,  the  half-breed  settlers 
and  pioneers  of  Manitoba,  who  —  combining  as  they  do  the  hardi- 
hood, the  endurance,  and  love  of  enterprise  generated  by  the  strain 
of  Indian  blood  within  their  veins,  with  the  civilization,  the  instruc- 
tion, and  the  intellectual  power  derived  from  their  fathers  —  have 
preached  the  gospel  of  peace  and  good-will  and  mutual  respect,  with 
results  beneficent  alike  to  the  Indian  chieftain  in  his  lodge  and  to 
the  British  settler  in  his  shanty.  They  have  been  the  ambassadors 
between  the  East  and  the  West,  the  interpreters  of  civilization  and 
its  exigencies  to  the  dwellers  on  the  prairie,  as  well  as  the  exponents 
to  the  white  man  of  the  consideration  justly  due  to  the  suscepti- 
bilities, the  sensitive  self-respect,  the  prejudices,  the  innate  craving 
for  justice  of  the  Indian  race.  In  fact  they  have  done  for  the  col- 
ony what  otherwise  would  have  been  left  unaccomplished;  and 
they  have  introduced  between  the  white  population  and  the  red 
man  a  traditional  feeling  of  amity  and  friendship,  which  but  for 
them  it  might  have  been  impossible  to  establish." 1 

These  remarks  of  the  Earl  gave  high  gratification  to  his 
auditors,  many  of  whom  were  of  the  class  to  whom  he  re* 

1  Speeches  and  Addresses  of  the  Earl  of  Dufferin.    London,  1882.    pp.  23? 
238. 


302  THE  FEENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

f erred,  though  generally  of  a  mixture  of  other  than  French 
blood.  Some  of  these  half-breeds  in  the  Northwest  are 
called  "Metis." 

Nor  did  the  priests  wholly  escape  the  jealousies  and 
reproaches  of  the  more  intelligent  of  their  flock,  whose 
rivalries  in  trade,  whose  intrigues  and  quarrels,  either  as 
rebuked  or  espoused  by  the  Jesuits,  brought  upon  some  of 
the  latter  the  imputation  of  having  an  interest  in  the  peltry 
and  even  in  the  brandy  traffic.  A  study  of  the  work  of 
these  French  priests  will  occupy  a  subsequent  chapter. 

We  must  note,  not  only  the  difference,  but  the  fun- 
damental and  radical  antagonism  between  the  motives, 
agencies,  and  principles  under  which  French  and  English 
enterprise  and  colonization  began  upon  this  continent,  so 
far  as  they  have  a  bearing  upon  their  relations  with  the 
natives.  The  French,  who  had  by  some  fifty  years  the 
start  in  their  earliest  tentative  voyages  for  prospecting  and 
trade,  came  here  with  royal  grants  and  privileges,  with  the 
patronage  of  court  nobles,  and  the  sanction  and  zeal  of 
powerful  ecclesiastical  orders.  They  retained  an  unbroken 
connection  with  the  primary  sources  of  power  and  authority 
at  home.  Viceroys  of  France  were  the  governors  of  the 
colony,  reporting  to  and  receiving  orders  from  the  chief 
cabinet  minister,  and  frequently  directly  to  and  from  the 
sovereign.  Military  sway,  with  martial  vigor  and  applian- 
ces, controlled  the  administration  of  the  colony.  But,  by 
an  intricate  and  confused  method  in  the  supreme  super- 
vision of  the  enterprise,  there  was  introduced  an  element 
of  constant  irritation  and  quarrelling  in  the  direction  of 
affairs,  by  the  appointment,  under  the  title  of  Intendant, 
of  a  sort  of  civil  officer  whose  functions  and  powers,  not 
sharply  distinguished  from  those  to  be  exercised  by  the 
viceroy  or  the  governor,  were  ever  bringing  the  two 
heads  into  quarrelling  over  cross  purposes,  rights,  and  dig- 
nities. The  Governor  and  the  Intendant  kept  a  jealous 
watch  on  each  other,  conciliated  and  won  their  respective 


THE  IROQUOIS  ENEMIES.  303 

partisans  and  abettors,  set  traps  and  played  intrigues  for 
mutual  annoyance,  and  by  separate  channels  of  intercourse 
through  rival  parties  at  court  did  what  was  in  their  power 
to  make  mischief  for  each  other.  Self-dependence,  inde- 
pendence of  foreign  oversight,  authority,  and  aid  were  what 
was  never  for  a  moment  meditated  or  desired  by  the  French 
here,  at  any  stage  or  period  of  their  colonization.  New 
France  was  not  only  as  much  a  part  of  the  empire  as  any 
portion  of  the  realm,  but  it  was  to  be,  so  far  as  circum- 
stances would  allow,  administered  as  a  home  province,  with 
a  transfer  of  feudal  institutions,  seigniories,  bishoprics, 
proprietary  rights,  noble  and  privileged  orders,  and  stingy 
allotments  for  common  people.  As  the  event  proved,  these 
distinctive  and  primary  characteristics  of  French  dominion 
in  America,  so  widely  contrasted  with  the  course  and  prin- 
ciples of  the  English  colonists,  could  not  be  transferred 
from  the  Old  World  so  that  they  would  take  root  here. 
They  were  uncongenial  with,  disastrous  to,  any  hopeful  en- 
terprise. And  we  are  to  find  in  this  fundamental  quality 
of  French  dominion,  with  all  the  zeal  and  heroism  engaged 
in  it,  the  reason  for  the  fact  that  France  has  no  heritage 
here. 

By  no  means,  however,  is  it  to  be  inferred  that  the 
French  were  in  all  cases  politic,  humane,  or  just  towards 
the  Indians.  On  the  contrary,  there  were  tribes,  the  Iro- 
quois  especially,  to  whom  the  French  were  from  the  first 
and  always  a  scourge,  relentless  and  destructive.  Raid  after 
raid  was  made  from  Canada,  beginning  with  Champlain, 
into  the  domains  of  the  Five  Nations;  and  when  the  sav- 
ages fled  from  the  armed  hosts,  their  pleasant  villages  were 
wasted  and  their  granaries  and  cornfields  destroyed  to  bring 
them  to  starvation.  One  act  of  shameful  atrocity,  with 
dark  treachery,  was  perpetrated  by  the  French,  in  1687,  on 
some  peaceful  and  confiding  Iroquois  at  Cadarakui,  the 
captives  from  which,  La  Potherie  says,  forty  in  number, 
were  sent  to  France  to  work  in  the  galleys.  Charlevoix 


304  THE   FRENCH   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

tells  us  that  Louis  had  written  to  the  Governor  of  Canada, 
La  Barre :  "  As  it  is  of  importance  to  the  good  of  my  ser- 
vice to  diminish  as  much  as  possible  the  number  of  the 
Iroquois,  and  that  as  these  savages,  who  are  strong  and 
robust,  will  serve  usefully  in  my  galleys,  I  desire  that  you 
will  do  everything  in  your  power  to  make  as  many  of 
them  as  possible  prisoners  of  war,  and  send  them  over 
to  France."  Some  of  the  survivors  were  afterwards  brought 
back  to  Canada. 

How  unlike  were  the  way,  the  means,  and  the  intent  of  the 
first  English  colonists  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard !  The  most 
resolute,  the  most  successful  of  them, — those  the  fruits  of 
whose  enterprise  have  been  the  richest  and  the  most  perma- 
nent,—  stole  away,  we  may  say,  from  England,  under  a 
covert.  The  New  England  colonists  asked  no  royal  patron- 
age beyond  that  going  with  their  parchment  charters,  the 
main  intent  and  value  of  which  were  to  secure  their  terri- 
torial rights  and  jurisdiction  against  foreign  rivals  and 
jealous  intruders  of  their  own  stock.  They  neither  bor- 
rowed nor  begged  supplies  in  ships,  armaments,  or  subsist- 
ence. They  sent  home  no  reports  of  progress  or  failure  to 
the  officials  of  the  mother  country,  nor  received  from  her 
any  challenge  to  return  a  reckoning  to  her.  No  civil  or 
military  function  was  discharged  among  them  by  commis- 
sion or  appointment  from  abroad;  but  their  magistrates, 
judges,  and  captains  were  elected  from  among  themselves. 
Occasionally,  under  the  sharp  pressure  of  their  poverty  or 
misfortunes,  or  in  the  apprehension  of  some  collision  with 
the  Dutch  or  the  French,  a  suggestion  was  dropped  by  one 
or  another  of  the  less  sturdy  of  the  New  England  stock, 
that  they  should  look  to  the  mother  country  for  counsel  or 
help.  But  the  timid  purpose  was  at  once  repudiated,  on  the 
ground  that  the  call  upon  England  for  the  slightest  favor, 
or  even  the  acceptance  of  one  unasked,  would  afford  a  pre- 
text to  her  for  intermeddling  in  the  affairs  of  her  exiled 
offspring,  whose  spirit  and  direction  of  self-management 


HUGUENOTS  IN  CANADA.  305 

indicated  from  the  first  that  same  sense  of  virtual  inde- 
pendence as  asserted  itself  in  the  fulness  of  time  in  our 
Revolutionary  War.  So  while  the  Old-World  feudalism 
and  despotism  underlaid  the  colonization  enterprise  of  New 
France,  and  sought  to  reproduce  and  reconstruct  itself 
among  these  forests  on  our  North  and  West,  a  pure  and 
rejuvenated  democracy  was  rooting  itself  and  rearing  its 
popular  institutions  and  sway  among  the  hard-working 
farmers  of  New  England  when  their  settlements  were  still 
on  the  seaboard.  Possibly  if  France  had  allowed  and 
encouraged,  instead  of  expressly  prohibiting,  her  heretic 
Huguenots  to  represent  her  in  her  New-World  coloniza- 
tion, she  might  still  have  had  provinces  and  dominion  here. 
But  a  Puritan  democracy,  inoculating  the  system  of  Eng- 
lishmen, proved  to  be  the  right  spirit  and  constituency  for 
securing  a  heritage  in  the  New  World.  Whether,  indeed, 
the  Huguenot  faith  and  blood  transported  hither  might 
not  have  adapted  itself  to  and  improved  for  noble  uses  this 
free  opportunity  for  colonial  empire,  is  a  question  which 
might  be  differently  answered.  No  great  statesman  sug- 
gested this  method  for  disposing  of  that  ever-increasing 
body  of  heretics  which  no  edicts,  disabilities,  threatenings, 
or  aggravation  of  cruelty  could  suppress,  and  which  was 
not  exterminated  by  the  shocking  massacre  on  St.  Bartho- 
lomew's day.  Both  England  and  New  England  were  glad 
to  welcome  such  of  the  hounded  exiles  from  France  as 
sought  in  them  a  refuge.  Those  who  found  in  either  place 
a  new  home,  with  fields  and  workshops  for  their  industry 

fand  thrift,  and  causes  to  engage  their  patriotism  for  the 
places  of  their  adoption,  have  incorporated  their  descend- 

'  ants  into  the  most  honored  ranks  of  society.  But  if  Old 
France  had  opened  New  France  even  only  as  a  place  of  en- 
forced banishment  for  the  Huguenots,  leaving  them  without 
threatening  or  burdens  to  make  the  best  of  new  homes  in 
the  wilderness,  two  results  worthy  of  the  exercise  of  a 
nation's  wisdom  in  council  and  foresight  would  have  fol- 


306  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

lowed.  France  would  have  been  saved  from  some  dreadful 
stains  of  persecution  now  on  her  annals,  and  the  affinity  be- 
tween the  Huguenots  and  the  Puritans  of  New  England 
would  have  greatly  modified  that  century  and  a  half  of 
warfare  which  was  waged  by  two  sovereignties  and  their 
subjects  here.  If  France  had  none  the  less  been  despoiled 
of  all  her  territory  here,  she  would  have  been  more  largely 
represented  by  Frenchmen  all  over  the  continent. 

What  effect,  if  any,  this  possible  transfer  hither  of  a 
large  French  population,  with  political  and  religious  pro- 
clivities in  accord  with  those  which  have  gained  the  mas- 
tery here,  would  have  had  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  Indian 
tribes,  it  might  be  difficult  to  decide.  So  far  as  the  substi- 
tute in  Canada  of  a  Protestant  for  a  Roman  Catholic  people 
would  have  qualified  the  hostility  of  Puritan  New  England 
(that  it  would  have  largely  done  so  is  altogether  prob- 
able), there  would  have  been  less  occasion  for  and  embit- 
terment  of  the  rivalries  and  jealousies  which  brought  in 
the  Indians,  —  never  in  the  dignified  position  of  umpires, 
hardly  even  in  the  equality  of  allies,  —  to  find  themselves 
losers  in  every  case,  whichever  of  the  principals  claimed 
the  advantage.  Certain  it  is  that  the  contentions  between 
the  English  and  the  French,  engaging  their  respective  In- 
dian allies,  were  intensely  aggravated  by  the  differences  in 
religion  of  the  principal  combatants.  It  was  at  a  time 
when  the  hatred  of  the  Papacy  and  the  Papists  was  aggra- 
vated for  all  Englishmen  by  the  policy  and  diplomacy 
which  entered  into  the  intrigues  of  European  peoples  en- 
gaged in  the  rival  ecclesiastical  systems.  Massachusetts 
followed  the  statutes  of  England  in  sharp  legislation  against 
the  Papists.  In  the  view  of  the  French  Canadian  Govern- 
ment it  was  but  an  axiom  of  natural  reason,  a  prompting 
of  common-sense,  that  they  should  engage  and  employ  In- 
dian allies.  But  this  obvious  suggestion  did  not  at  all 
relieve  the  matter  in  the  view  of  the  Puritans.  It  was 
enough  for  them,  —  in  their  amazement,  protests,  and 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE   PRIESTS.  307 

groans,  —  that  Papists,  calling  themselves  Christians, 
should  engage  the  tomahawks  and  firebrands  against 
even  heretics,  who  also,  after  a  sort,  were  Christians. 
There  was  a  region  between  Acadia  and  the  Penobscot 
and  Kennebec  rivers  which  was  always  in  controversy  as 
a  boundary  between  the  European  claimants,  while  the 
Indians  insisted  that  they  had  never  parted  with  its  own- 
ership. This  region  was  the  scene  of  desperate  encoun- 
ters, of  pillagings,  slaughter,  and  burnings ;  the  English 
being  the  chief,  though  by  no  means  the  only,  sufferers. 
Nor  did  the  savages  confine  their  warfare  of  ambushes 
and  night  surprises  to  that  region,  but  they  came  alarm- 
ingly near  to  Boston.  The  Puritans  were  maddened  by 
the  suspicion,  often  assured  by  positive  knowledge,  that 
the  French  priests  inspirited,  indicated,  and  directed  these 
assaults,  and  sometimes  accompanied  the  war-parties  of 
the  savages.  This  complaint  was  hardly  a  consistent  one, 
coming  from  those  whose  ministers  were  an  equal  power 
in  military  and  civil  as  in  religious  affairs.  The  English 
also  were  wont  to  take  chaplains  on  their  expeditions. 
There  is  on  record  a  graphic  sketch  of  a  vigorous  con- 
flict between  a  minister  and  a  priest,  on  a  spot  of  con- 
tested territory,  to  assume  the  spiritual  charge  of  a  band 
of  heathen,  already  nominal  disciples  of  the  Roman 
Church.  Indeed  religion,  in  anything  but  name,  keeps 
itself  well  out  of  this  fearful  strife.  In  the  melancholy 
relation  now  to  follow,  the  Roman  priests  stand  charged 
with  a  most  odious  agency. 

A  tragic  incident  in  the  long  struggle  between  the 
French  and  English,  with  their  respective  Indian  allies,  on 
our  northern  bounds,  connects  itself  with  the  forcible  re- 
moval, in  1755,  of  a  people  in  Acadia,  known  as  the 
"  French  Neutrals."  The  theme  has  been  wrought  by 
the  pen  of  genius,  with  all  the  richest  charms  of  ro- 
mance and  tender  sentiment,  into  the  exquisite  narrative 
and  descriptive  poem  "  Evangeline."  In  the  interests  of 


308  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

hard,  historic  truth,  with  all  its  stern,  acrimonious,  and 
distressing  aggravations,  we  must  read  that  incident  in 
sober  and  saddening  prose.  Acadia,  or  Nova  Scotia,  the 
oldest  French  colony  in  North  America,  had  been  for 
near  a  century  and  a  half  occupied  by  that  people,  and 
had  always  been  a  scene  of  distraction  and  destruction. 
The  peninsula,  in  the  fortunes  of  rivalry  and  war,  be- 
sides passing  by  royal  patent  from  one  to  another  French 
proprietary,  had  been  transferred  some  half-a-dozen  times 
by  treaty  negotiations  alternately  to  the  English  and 
French  crowns.  That  single  statement  tells  the  tale  of 
what  sea  and  shore  had  witnessed.  The  treaty  of  Utrecht, 
in  1713,  closing  one  of  the  paroxysms  of  strife,  had  ceded 
it  to  England.  It  was  never  to  be  transferred  again;  but 
the  tenure  of  it  was  long  at  risk,  and  the  possession  of  it 
was  worse  than  of  doubtful  value  to  the  English.  There 
were  at  the  time  about  twenty-five  hundred  French  in- 
habitants. There  was,  of  course,  an  uncertainty,  keeping 
open  a  dispute,  as  to  what  were  its  bounds.  The  English 
soon  found  that  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  French  to  re- 
strict these  as  narrowly  as  possible.  The  English  drew 
the  boundary  line  as  east  from  the  mouth  of  the  Kenne- 
bec  to  Quebec,  including  the  southern  shore  and  islands. 
The  latter  insisted  that  the  St.  John  and  the  lands  north 
of  the  Bay  of  Fundy  were  not  included  in  the  cession, 
and  that  Acadia  signified  only  the  southern  part  of  what 
is  now  Nova  Scotia.  It  was  provided  by  the  treaty  that 
the  subjects  of  the  King  of  France  in  Acadia  might, 
within  a  year,  move  away  at  their  pleasure,  disposing  of 
their  real  and  personal  property ;  or,  if  they  chose  to 
remain,  might  retain  their  religion  and  their  priests, 
and  be  as  free  in  all  respects  as  British  subjects  under 
British  laws.  As  successive  British  sovereigns  came  to 
the  throne,  orders  were  sent  over  that  these  so-called 
Neutrals  should  take  the  oath  of  allegiance,  while  not 
required  to  bear  arms  against  the  French  or  for  the 


DEATH  OP  FATHER  RALLE  309 

English.  Under  the  influence  of  their  priests,  threaten- 
ing them  with  ecclesiastical  penalties,  they  were  warned 
not  to  transfer  their  allegiance,  but  to  keep  their  loyalty 
to  France,  and  to  refuse  the  required  oath. .  The  priests  in 
Acadia  were  under  the  pay  of  the  French  Government,  and 
received  secret  counsels  from  the  authorities  in  Canada. 
Of  course  there  was  a  state  of  restlessness,  insubordina- 
tion, and  not  even  concealed  lawlessness  and  rebell- 
ion, —  waiting  for  another  cast  of  the  dice  of  warfare 
or  diplomacy.  There  was  a  continual  series  of  aggres- 
sions, inroads,  assaults,  and  slaughters  upon  the  English 
settlers  on  the  outskirts  of  Maine,  New  Hampshire,  and 
Massachusetts.  These  were  instigated  from  Canada,  and 
the  Acadian  priests  were  believed  to  be  engaging  their 
flocks  in  open  or  secret  connivance. 

The  Indians  claimed  as  theirs  the  lands  on  the  Kennebec, 
on  which  the  English  were  steadily  intruding.  In  reprisal 
the  latter  enlisted  and  sent  their  war-parties  for  punish- 
ment and  vengeance.  On  a  second  attack,  made  in  1724, 
by  the  English  and  some  Mohawk  allies,  upon  the  Indian 
village  of  Norridgewok,  during  the  sack  and  burning  of 
the  houses  and  the  church  Father  Ralle  was  killed  and 
scalped.  He  was  then  sixty-seven  years  old,  enfeebled  by 
twenty-six  years  of  hard  service  in  the  woods,  and  much 
beloved  by  his  red  disciples.  He  was  a  devoted  missionary 
and  a  scholar.  His  dictionary  of  the  language  of  his  Indi- 
ans is  preserved  in  the  Library  of  Harvard  College.  The 
English  rejoiced  over  his  violent  end,  as  they  regarded  him 
as  a  crafty  enemy,  and  believed  from  his  papers  which  they 
rifled  that  the  evidence  was  complete  of  his  evil  machina- 
tions from  instructions  received  from  Canada.  In  an 
ambush  in  one  of  the  raids  of  the  savages  Captain  Jo- 
siah  Winslow  was  killed.  He  was  a  brother  of  General 
John  Winslow,  who  on  this  account  might  have  thrown 
warm  will  into  his  charge  of  removing  the  Neutrals  from 
Acadia. 


310  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

After  thirty  years  of  a  qualified  sort  of  peace  between 
France  and  England,  trouble  again  opened  in  1743,  which 
of  course  signified  a  renewal  of  open  conflict  between  the 
Europeans  and  the  red  men  here.  The  great  and  enor- 
mously costly  stronghold  of  Louisburg,  into  which  the 
constructive  skill  and  the  lavish  outlay  of  France  had  been 
wrought  for  thirty  years,  was  taken  by  a  colonial  and  Eng- 
lish army  and  fleet,  and  having  capitulated  on  June  15, 
1745,  its  vast  stores  and  defences  were  removed.  After 
this  first  capture  it  was  restored  to  the  French  by  treaty. 
It  was  again  taken  by  the  English  in  1758,  when  its  walls 
were  dismantled,  and  all  the  toil  and  money  spent  upon  it 
showed  a  heap  of  wreck.  Another  interval  of  rage  and 
havoc  followed.  French  fleets  and  armies  were  to  sweep 
the  coasts  and  destroy  Boston,  as  well  as  drive  out  the 
English  from  all  their  Eastern  strongholds ;  but  tempests 
and  deadly  pestilence  thwarted  the  enterprise.  This  war 
was  closed  by  the  Treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  in  1748. 

If  one  could  search  the  depths  and  the  soundings  of  the 
Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  and  of  all  the  coasts  of  northern  New 
England  and  the  British  Provinces,  what  harrowing  secrets 
would  be  revealed  of  wrecks  of  heavily  armed  frigates,  and 
of  vessels  of  every  name  and  size,  which  have  gone  down 
there  in  storm  and  battle,  carrying  with  them  their  human 
freight  sinking  to  death  in  the  rage  of  passion  or  in  the 
dreads  and  horrors  of  the  method  of  their  end!  What 
engines  of  havoc,  what  implements,  fabrics,  and  fruits  of 
peaceful  ingenuity  and  industry  are  buried  in  those  dank 
chambers  of  the  ocean,  the  watery  trophies  of  the  victory  of 
the  elements  over  the  common  spoilings  of  humanity ! 

After  the  English  had  held  Acadia  for  thirty  years,  they 
had  nothing  to  show  for  it  except  the  cost  of  the  charge. 
Many  schemes  and  attempts  were  devised  to  bring  in  Eng- 
lish settlers  and  residents.  Here  arose  the  troubles  with 
the  uncongenial  and  hostile  people  then  in  occupancy, -the 
French  Neutrals,  who  insisted  upon  remaining  as  French, 


CHARACTER  OF  THE  ACADIANS.  311 

refusing  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  Britain,  though  at  times 
threatening  to  remove  from  their  lands.  The  evidence  is 
sufficient  and  undeniable  that  they  were  under  the  influence 
of  a  priest,  Le  Loutre ;  and  it  was  but  to  be  expected  that 
he  should  exercise  that  influence  in  the  French  interest. 
This  priest  was  to  the  English  especially  odious,  as  not 
only  intermeddling  with  civil  affairs  out  of  his  clerical 
province,  —  as  did  all  his  brethren,  much  to  the  disgust 
and  annoyance  even  of  the  French  magistrates  when  they 
controlled  Acadia,  —  but  as  a  most  crafty  and  treacherous 
and  vicious  man,  engaged  also  in  profitable  trade.  He  was 
Vicar-General  of  Acadia  under  the  ecclesiastical  rule  of 
Quebec,  and  was  the  agent  of  all  disaffection  and  mischief. 
He  threatened  to  withhold  the  sacraments  from  all  his 
flock  who  succumbed  to  the  English,  and  to  set  the  Indians 
upon  them. 

Orders  came  from  the  English  Government  that  these 
Neutrals  who  would  not  come  under  allegiance  should  be 
removed.  We  all  know  how  romance  and  poetry  invest 
them.  What  were  they  in  condition,  character,  temper, 
and  naked  reality  to  those  who  had  to  deal  with  them  in 
earnest  ? 

The  Abbe  Raynal  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  intro- 
duce into  literature  the  ideal  view  of  the  Acadians,  as  a 
gentle,  loving,  peaceful,  pastoral  people,  in  sweet  innocence 
and  home  delights  sharing  the  joys  and  prosperity  of  a  sim- 
ple, guileless  life.  He  mistook  Acadia  for  Arcadia.  He  had 
a  purpose  in  his  essay :  it  was  to  set  in  contrast  the  pros- 
perity and  happy  condition  of  these  transatlantic  villagers 
with  that  of  the  peasants  of  France  before  the  Revolution. 
So  he  heightens  every  element  and  coloring  of  that  con- 
trast. He  says  the  Acadians  had  no  quarrels,  no  lawsuits, 
no  poverty.  Their  loved  and  unworldly  priests  settled  all 
their  variances,  made  their  wills,  and  guided  their  affairs. 
With  mutual  sympathy  and  generosity  they  relieved  each 
other's  misfortunes.  Early  marriages  averted  celibacy  and 


312  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

vice.  Their  houses  were  as  substantial  and  comfortable  as 
those  of  European  farmers.  With  their  flocks  and  fields 
and  cattle  and  fruits  and  laden  barns  they  filled  the  round 
of  a  happy  existence. 

Those  who  had  to  deal  with  these  Neutrals  as  neighbors, 
magistrates,  military  officers,  report  them  to  us  very  differ- 
ently. We  must  let  reason  and  candor  mediate  for  us  as 
we  hesitate  between  romance  and  reality.  The  records  of 
governors  of  Acadia,  both  French  and  English,  with  official 
and  other  papers,  are  preserved  in  abundance  and  of  full 
authenticity.  Alike  these  complain  of  the  mischievous  and 
malignant  influence  of  the  priests  over  the  people  as  arbi- 
trary and  treacherous,  and  tending  always  to  alienation 
and  strife,  and  urging  to  a  resistance  of  government.  The 
people  are  described  as  idle,  restless,  roaming  as  bush- 
rangers, dissolute  among  the  Indians,  leading  a  squalid 
and  shabby  life.  The  council  at  Quebec  and  the  English 
courts  were  worried  with  their  petty  and  constant  litiga- 
tion. Their  dwellings  were  "  wretched  wooden  boxes," 
dilapidated  and  filthy,  and  without  cellars.  Nor  was  this 
all  that  was  alleged  to  their  reproach  and  offence :  they 
were  called  "  neutrals ; "  but  parties  of  them  had  been 
known  to  have  prompted  and  engaged  in  the  bloody  raids 
of  the  Indians  on  the  English  settlements,  to  have  done 
many  acts  of  violence  and  treachery,  to  have  acted  as  spies 
and  informers,  and  to  have  supplied  the  French  with  cattle 
and  grain  while  refusing  such  trade  with  the  English  garri- 
son. The  great  Seven  Years'  War  between  France  and 
England  was  then  threatening  across  the  water,  the  direst 
rage  of  which  was  to  be  felt  by  the  colonies  of  England 
here,  Braddock's  defeat  in  1755  opening  the  series  of  catas- 
trophes. The  French  monarch  was  working  his  own  Hu- 
guenot subjects  in  the  galleys,  while  the  English  masters 
of  Acadia  covenanted  to  the  Neutrals  their  own  religion 
and  priests.  The  English  said  that  they  would  gladly  have 
had  the  Acadians  remain  if  they  could  have  been  relied 


REMOVAL  OF  THE  ACADIANS.  313 

upon  as  merely  harmless.  They  were  not  oppressed  by 
any  burden,  or  subject  to  any  tax  save  that  which  their 
own  priests  exacted  of  them.  It  is  believed  that  they  would 
have  been  content,  and  would  have  come  under  British 
allegiance,  had  it  not  been  for  the  malign  and  defiant  influ- 
ence of  those  priests.  The  English  affirmed  that  they  were 
at  great  charge  for  keeping  up  garrisons  ;  that  for  forty 
years  they  had  had  no  benefit  from  their  treaty  posses- 
sion ;  that  they  could  not  induce  their  own  countrymen 
to  come  in  as  colonists,  un welcomed  by  such  uncongenial 
neighbors ;  and  that  the  professed  Neutrals  were  among 
them  an  ever-threatening  element,  ready  to  turn  to  most  ac- 
tive enmity  as  military  or  diplomatical  complications  might 
afford  the  opportunity.  A  thousand  of  the  Acadians  had 
indeed  moved  away  voluntarily  in  1750,  leaving  their  houses 
and  barns  to  be  destroyed  by  the  Indians.  Nearly  double 
the  ^number  that  were  soon  to  be  forcibly  removed  by  the 
English,  had  been  induced  or  compelled  by  the  French  to 
withdraw  from  the  end  of  the  peninsula  to  the  north  of  it, 
and  were  there  a  threatening  power. 

Under  this  condition  of  things  the  English  governor, 
Lawrence,  acting  by  instructions  from  the  King  through 
Lord  Halifax,  after  disarming  many  of  the  remaining  Neu- 
trals, made  most  deliberate  and  persistent  efforts,  but  all 
in  vain,  to  induce  them  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance. 
Deputies  sent  from  their  different  villages  positively  re- 
fused to  do  so.  In  counsel  with  the  Governor  and  two 
English  admirals,  who  advised  the  measure,  it  was  decided 
that  those  thus  recusant  should  be  removed  with  their 
families,  taking  with  them  their  money  and  household 
effects,  and  that  they  should  be  supplied  with  provisions 
and  distributed  over  the  southern  provinces  at  distances 
which  would  prevent  any  concert  between  them.  Addi- 
tional reasons  were  found  for  this  measure  in  charges  that 
the  Neutrals  were  idle  and  improvident,  and  had  neglected 
field  labor  and  fishing,  as  most  naturally  would  be  the  case 


314  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

under  the  uncertainties  and  anxieties  of  their  condition. 
The  proffer  of  French  authorities  to  transport  the  Neutrals 
to  France  was  rejected,  as  not  likely  to  be  fairly  and  fully 
carried  out. 

The  measure  having  been  decided  upon,  steps  were  at 
once  taken  to  effect  it,  and  different  agents  were  appointed 
to  complete  the  design  at  the  different  villages.  The  in- 
habitants of  Chiegnecto  fled  into  the  woods  and  kept  out 
of  the  way.  All  who  could  affirm  that  they  had  not  been 
in  arms  against  the  English,  and  would  at  last  take  the 
oath,  were  at  liberty  to  remain.  Colonel  John  Winslow, 
of  Massachusetts,  in  command  at  Mines,  did  his  work  with 
resolution  and  completeness.  Of  the  inhabitants,  four  hun- 
dred and  eighteen  unarmed  men  were  enticed  into  their 
church,  on  Sept.  5,  1755,  as  if  to  listen  to  a  message  from 
the  King  of  England.  By  a  bold  ruse  they  were  seized 
and  borne  to  the  waiting  vessels.  Nearly  two  thousand 
were  removed  from  Mines,  and  eleven  hundred  from  Anna- 
polis. A  party  of  two  hundred  and  twenty-six  Acadians 
seized  the  vessel  in  which  they  were  conveyed,  made  off 
with  it,  and  were  not  recovered.  About  three  thousand  in 
all  were  removed.  They  were  distributed  over  the  prov- 
inces, of  course  as  a  public  charge,  a  burden  and  a  nuisance 
to  those  who  were  compelled  to  receive  them,  forlorn,  home- 
less, wretched,  and  sick  at  heart  themselves.  At  intervals 
of  between  a  few  months  and  several  years  about  two  thirds 
of  them,  in  various  ways,  got  back  to  their  loved  Acadia.1 

Such  is  the  rehearsal  of  this  tragic  story  as  it  stands  on 
the  pages  of  authentic  history.  No  morbidness  of  senti- 

1  In  dealing  with  this  painful  episode,  I  have  heen  greatly  indebted  to 
and  have  gladly  followed  the  lead  of  Mr.  James  Hannay,  in  his  "History  of 
Acadia,  from  its  First  Discovery  to  its  Surrender  to  England  by  the  Treaty 
of  Paris.  St.  John,  N.  B.,  1879."  The  author,  most  thorough  and  compre- 
hensive, in  his  documentary  research  shows  also  a  judicial  and  most  candid 
spirit,  seeking  to  present  both  sides  in  a  harrowing  historical  incident,  and 
affording  his  readers  of  different  sympathies  the  means  of  strengthening  their 
own  from  the  full  and  calm  statements  which  he  sets  before  them. 


DISPERSION   OP  THE   ACADIANS.  315 

inent,  no  tricks  of  fancy,  are  needed  to  enhance  its  sad- 
ness ;  for  it  is  indeed  a  most  piteous  story.  Allowing  it  to 
stand  in  every  fact,  detail,  argument,  and  vindication  as 
related  and  urged  by  the  English,  it  still  records  one  of 
the  most  distressing  outrages  which  either  military  or  dip- 
lomatic policy  or  necessity  has  instigated  and  carried  out 
amid  civilized  scenes  of  the  earth.  We  may  in  measure 
and  degree  exculpate  the  English,  and  perhaps  affirm  that 
there  was  no  alternative  course  for  them  under  their  annoy- 
ances, perplexities,  and  aggravations ;  but  still  we  can  put 
ourselves  into  such  sympathetic  and  appreciative  relations 
with  the  victims  —  if  of  necessity  and  circumstance  —  as 
to  see  only  what  they  saw,  to  feel  as  they  felt,  and  to  con- 
fess that  their  course  would  most  likely  have  been  our  own. 
They  were  a  rude  and  simple  peasant  race.  Their  priests 
represented  to  them  the  law  of  their  highest  reverence  and 
allegiance.  Their  home  had  been  amid  the  forests  and 
fields  and  ocean  shores  of  their  peninsula  for  four  or  five 
generations.  In  spite  of  fog  and  ice  and  long,  dreary  win- 
ters, they  had  prospered  by  the  farm,  the  fishery,  and  the 
hunt :  they  had  flocks  and  herds.  They  had  perpetuated 
among  them  the  characteristics  of  the  peasant  life  of  France 
when  their  ancestors  came  hither.  Their  range  of  exist- 
ence was  narrow ;  their  habits  were  mean  and  earthy,  with 
much  that  was  merely  animal  and  sordid.  All  the  more 
was  what  they  had  of  joy  and  good  and  opportunity,  and  as- 
sociated fellowship  in  interest  and  pleasure,  very  precious 
to  them.  They  loved  to  hold  dear  the  tie  to  their  beloved 
France.  They  might  yet  come  again  under  its  protection. 
They  had  no  reason  to  respect  or  to  succumb  to  the  Eng- 
lish :  loyalty  and  religion  drew  their  hearts  another  way. 
They  had  to  witness  and  mourn  over  the  wreck  of  their 
domestic  life.  They  were  scattered,  unwelcome,  and  only 
as  objects  of  dislike  and  disgust  among  uncongenial  scenes 
and  strangers.  Often  —  but  not  with  intent,  or  heartless- 
ness  of  cruelty  —  families  among  them  were  parted  never 


316  THE   FRENCH   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

to  be  knit  together  again.  We  acknowledged,  in  entering 
upon  this  narration,  a  conflict  between  its  rehearsal  as  his- 
tory and  its  drapery  in  romance.  But  there  is  no  need  of 
admitting  this.  Amid  all  the  stern  or  disagreeable  aspects 
of  this  prose  tragedy,  there  are  elements  from  which  poetry 
may  work  its  richest,  fairest,  and  tenderest  wreathings  of 
sentiment,  with  the  human  heart  to  prompt  and  to  respond 
to  its  melancholy  images  of  devastated  scenes  and  tortured 
affections.  Evangelines  and  Gabriels  are  the  representa- 
tives of  a  large  fellowship  of  parted,  seeking,  and  hopelessly 
saddened  sufferers.1 

The  tragedy  at  Mines  and  Grand  Pr£,  with  its  exaspe- 
rating effect  upon  the  French,  might  well  introduce  the 
series  of  horrors  and  catastrophes  of  the  seven  years 
which  followed.  The  incidents  of  this  closing  stage  of  a 
continuous  struggle  must  be  left  for  summary  notice  in 
the  next  chapter,  as  belonging  more  strictly  to  the  gene- 
ral theme  of  the  European  colonial  relations  with  the  In- 
dians. New  actors  came  into  those  distressing  scenes. 
The  whole  power  of  Great  Britain — with  competent  and 
incompetent  leaders,  with  councils  of  various  degrees  of 
wisdom  and  weakness  —  was  engaged  in  that  decisive  cam- 
paign of  a  protracted  strife  of  rivalry  for  supreme  sway 
in  the  New  World.  I  have  already  plainly  expressed  the 
shock  which  it  gives  to  our  idea  of  justice  in  the  disposal 
of  the  issues  on  which  the  honor  and  destiny  of  empire 
depends,  that  France  —  after  all  her  heroism  of  toil,  en- 
terprise, and  exploration  on  this  continent  —  should  have 
no  heritage  here.  On  those  rocky  cliffs,  those  high-raised 

1  The  next  in  the  series  of  volumes  which  Mr.  Parkman  has  promised,  as 
relating  to  the  close  of  French  dominion  on  this  continent,  is  waited  for  with 
much  interest.  The  theme  is  one  which  will  engage  all  his  talents  and  rich 
resources.  Especially  will  his  faithful  researches  add  to  our  accurate  knowl- 
edge of  the  tragic  story  of  the  removal  of  the  Neutrals  from  Acadia.  It  is 
understood  that  he  has  possessed  himself  of  a  mass  of  original  documents, 
which  will  throw  much  light  upon  the  intrigues  and  secret  movements  of  that 
incident. 


THE   FRENCH   AND  INDIAN  WAR.  317 

plains  of  Quebec,  those  island  grandeurs  overlooked  by 
the  Royal  Mount, — where  Champlain  and  Frontenac  laid, 
in  noble  purpose,  the  foundations  for  empire  and  glory 
of  transatlantic  France, — the  sentence  of  destiny  was  pro- 
nounced. It  was  fitting  that  Wolfe  and  Mont  calm,  lead- 
ing the  ranks  of  the  combatants  in  the  last  struggle, 
should  mingle  their  life-blood  on  the  rocky  field.  The 
treaty  of  Paris,  in  1763,  left  to  France  a  little  group  of 
fishing  islands,  Miquelon  and  St.  Pierre,  off  the  coast  of 
Newfoundland.1 

The  close  of  the  long  and  bloody  conflict  between  Great 
Britain  with  the  aid  of  her  colonies  and  the  French  with 
their  Indian  allies,  which  insured  the  conquest  of  Canada, 
by  no  means  put  a  period  to  the  presence  and  influence 
of  the  French  on  the  continent,  especially  their  influence 
over  the  Indian  tribes.  By  their  sagacious  policy  in 
dealing  with  the  savages,  their  domestic  and  social  affi- 
liation with  them,  and  their  generosity,  they  had  con- 
ciliated the  larger  number  of  the  nearest  tribes,  and 
drawn  some  of  them  under  bonds  of  strong  friendship, 
which  hold  even  to  this  day ;  so  that  the  subjection  of 
the  French  by  no  means  secured  that  of  the  Indians  to 
the  English  control.  In  fact,  by  a  curious  retributive 
working,  the  French  left  precisely  the  same  after-penalty 
of  savage  warfare  to  the  English  which  the  English, 


1  There  is  now  in  course  of  publication,  in  Paris,  a  series  of  volumes 
under  the  following  title  :  "  Decouvertes  et  E"tablissements  des  Frai^ais  dans 
L'Ouest  et  dans  Le  Sud  de  L'Amerique  Septentrionale  (1614-1754)  Memoires 
et  Documents  Originaux,  Recueilles  et  Publics  par  Pierre  Margry,  etc."  Four 
volumes  of  the  series  have  already  appeared,  —  the  first  covering  the  period 
1614-1684,  in  1875  ;  the  fourth,  1694-1703,  in  1880.  These  Memoirs  and 
Documents  are  of  the  highest  historical  value  and  authenticity.  They  are 
printed  without  any  accompanying  note  or  comment,  from  manuscripts,  and 
present  a  noble  memorial  of  French  enterprise  on  this  continent.  Their  in- 
terest to  us  as  a  nation  very  properly  prompted  the  patronage  of  our  Govern- 
ment in  their  publication.  Congress  subscribed  for  several  hundred  copies, 
which  are  to  be  improved  by  exchanges  for  other  valuable  publications,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Congressional  Library. 


318  THE   FRENCH   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

twenty  years  afterwards,  left  to  us  when  our  ties  of  alle- 
giance and  dependence  were  severed.  The  formidable 
conspiracy  which  that  greatest  of  Indian  chieftains,  Pon- 
tiac,  organized  among  the  native  tribes,  at  the  date  when 
the  triumph  of  British  power  was  established  on  this  con- 
tinent, was  prompted,  as  he  alleged,  by  sympathy  with 
the  French,  whose  supremacy  he  hoped  to  see  re-estab- 
lished here.  He  said  he  was  willing  to  regard  the  King 
of  England  as  his  uncle,  but  not  as  his  superior  or  sover- 
eign. The  idea  had  dawned  upon  his  master  mind  that 
the  sovereignty  of  the  wilderness  rested  with  the  red 
men.  His  intelligent  casting  of  the  horoscope  of  the  low- 
ering future  for  his  race  led  him  to  seek  boldly  and  con- 
sistently to  sap  the  very  roots  of  the  threatening  ca- 
lamity for  them,  by  advising  them  to  be  no  longer  depend- 
ent on  the  white  man's  goods  or  to  cherish  any  lurking 
partiality  for  the  white  man's  habits  of  life.  The  peace, 
the  security,  the  old  pristine  heritage  and  prosperity  of 
the  savage  depended  on  his  reversion  to,  his  content 
with,  his  bold  defence  of,  his  forest  domain,  unviolated 
by  the  intrusion  of  the  white  man,  however  plausible  or 
profitable  his  errand.  Pontiac  had  doubtless  carefully, 
and  with  discrimination,  weighed  in  the  scale  of  his  own 
calm  judgment  the  gain  and  loss  to  his  race  of  their  in- 
tercourse with  foreigners.  In  his  view  the  loss  predomi- 
nated in  sum  and  in  particulars.  He  inherited  the  pol- 
icy and  the  sagacity  of  King  Philip  of  Pokanoket,  and 
added  to  them  a  philosophy  which  was  his  own.  We 
are  yet  to  read  of  the  methods  and  stages  of  his  success 
in  organizing  a  dark  conspiracy  among  the  Indians,  which 
came  only  so  far  short  of  full  success  that  it  stopped  with 
the  glutting  of  vengeance,  the  English  colonists  quailing 
before  its  wreakings  of  rage. 

And  just  here  it  was  that  England  trifled  with  her  oppor- 
tunity, and  intensified  all  the  toil  and  peril  of  the  end  she 
had  in  view.  All  through  the  previous  hundred  and  fifty 


CESSION   OP   NEW   PRANCE   TO   ENGLAND.  319 

years  the  French  had  gained  great  advantages  by  showing 
themselves  to  be  far  more  sagacious  and  politic  in  concili- 
ating and  winning  power,  influence,  and  absolute  sway  over 
the  savages  than  the  English.  The  Indians  were  keenly 
observant  of  the  difference  in  its  full  import  and  in  all  its 
details.  The  French,  as  has  abundantly  appeared,  flattered, 
cajoled,  and  assimilated  with  them.  And  they  were  also 
generous,  even  lavish,  towards  few  or  more  of  the  red  race 
who  represented  its  good  or  bad  traits.  The  English  took 
no  pains  to  conceal  their  haughty  and  insolent  contempt  of 
the  savages.  They  were  also  stingy  and  niggard  in  the  be- 
stowment  of  the  gifts,  the  receiving  of  which  the  savages 
had  come  to  expect  in  all  their  intercourse  with  the  whites ; 
for  the  savages  were  to  the  last  degree  mercenary.  The 
very  proudest  of  them  was  ready  to  become  an  importunate 
beggar,  and  would  barter  all  his  dignity  for  a  trinket,  a 
blanket,  or  a  draught  of  fire-water.  At  this  critical  time, 
when  the  agents  of  England  under  the  heavy  expenses 
already  incurred  were  trying  to  practise  a  penurious  econ- 
omy, the  savages  would  tauntingly  remind  them  how  gener- 
ous their  French  Father  had  been  in  clothing  and  arming 
them  while  they  had  been  his  allies.  It  was  natural,  too, 
that  the  tribes  which  had  been  long  in  contact  with  the 
whites  through  the  fur-trade,  and  in  alliances,  should  have 
come  to  depend  upon  the  implements  and  conveniences  of 
civilization,  even  to  the  extent  in  many  cases  of  disusing 
their  old  bows  and  stone  tools  and  skin  robes.  Nor  could 
even  Pontiac  wean  them  from  these  flesh-pots.  The  French 
had  never  asked  of  the  savages  the  formal  cession  of  their 
territory,  and  had  represented  that  the  strongholds  built 
within  it  did  not  signify  a  formal  possession.  Stoutly,  too, 
had  the  savages  repudiated  the  idea  of  their  being  under 
obligations  of  allegiance  in  any  full  sense  as  subjects  even 
to  the  King  of  France :  though  he  was  their  father,  he  was 
only  a  brother  to  the  chiefs.  Bluntly  did  English  officers 
announce  to  them,  that,  being  conquered,  they  were  subjects 


320  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

of  the  British  king,  that  their  land  had  become  his,  and 
that  the  forts  in  their  old  domain  were  to  represent  his 
Majesty's  sovereignty.  Even  after  the  force  of  the  con- 
spiracy of  the  tribes  for  rooting  out  the  English  had  been 
broken,  Colonel  Bradstreet,  in  his  camp,  in  a  preliminary 
council  with  some  of  the  abettors  of  Pontiac,  had  the  folly 
to  require  of  them,  as  the  first  condition  of  peace,  that  they 
should  submit  themselves  as  subjects  of  the  King  of  Great 
Britain  and  own  his  sovereignty  of  their  domain.  As  the 
Indians  were  never  subjects  of  their  own  chieftains,  and 
never  were  in  allegiance,  it  is  not  probable  that  they  had 
any  ideas  answering  to  the  import  of  those  terms. 

One  other  very  important  fact  is  to  be  taken  into  account 
in  connection  with  that  fiercest  struggle  with  the  savages 
and  the  English  which  took  place  on  the  continent  on  the 
cession  of  Canada  and  the  Ohio  Valley.  Embittered  and 
humiliated  Frenchmen,  traders,  half-breeds,  and  a  very  busy 
and  pestilent  class  of  vagabonds  and  renegades  in  their 
interest,  took  pains  to  nerve  the  exasperated  Indian  tribes 
with  rumors  and  positive  assertions  that  their  French  Father 
had  merely  fallen  asleep,  but  was  awake  again,  and  that 
fleets  and  armies  were  already  on  their  way,  with  mighty 
resources,  through  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi, 
to  crush  the  English  interlopers,  to  protect  and  reinstate 
the  natives  in  their  rights,  and  to  renew  the  now  halting 
trade,  under  the  suspense  of  which  they  were  suffering. 
Miscreant  deceivers  were  on  the  alert  to  rally  the  faltering 
vigor  of  the  enraged  savages  all  through  the  stages  of  their 
bloody  work,  by  reiterating  this  falsehood.  The  delusion 
was  ruinous  to  those  who  trusted  in  it.  At  no  period  in 
our  Indian  history,  including  that  of  the  war  of  1812 
and  those  of  recent  years,  has  there  been  extended  among 
the  tribes  such  a  wrathful  spirit,  such  desperate  resolve, 
such  fired  malignity  of  rage  against  the  whites.  The 
native  chiefs,  according  to  the  measure  of  their  intelligence, 
their  forecast,  and  their  wild  and  fervent  patriotism,  seem 


CONSPIRACY  OP  PONTIAC.  321 

then  first  to  have  fully  realized  their  impending  doom, 
and  to  have  summoned  all  their  resources  of  barbarous 
rage,  ferocity,  cunning,  and  prowess,  with  something  of  real 
skill  and  concentration  in  their  wilderness  tactics,  to  avert 
that  doom.  Intelligent,  fervid,  pathetic  pleading  and  re- 
monstrance were  not  wanting  from  them;  but  hate  and 
exasperation  infuriated  them. 

Then  came  upon  the  scene  that  ablest  and  most  daring 
and  resolute  savage  chieftain  known  in  our  history.  There 
have  been  three  conspicuous  men  of  the  native  race,  —  the 
towering  chieftains  of  the  forest,  signal  types  of  all  the 
characteristics  of  the  savage,  ennobled,  so  to  speak,  by 
their  lofty  patriotism, — who  have  appeared  on  the  scene  of 
action  at  the  three  most  critical  eras  for  the  white  man  on 
this  continent.  If  the  material  and  stock  of  such  men  are 
not  exhausted,  there  is  no  longer  for  them  a  sphere,  a 
range,  an  occasion  or  opportunity  in  place  or  time  here. 
The  white  man  is  the  master  of  this  continent.  An  In- 
dian conspiracy  would  prove  abortive  in  the  paucity  or 
discordancy  of  its  materials.  What  the  great  sachem  Me- 
tacomet,  or  King  Philip,  was  in  the  first  rooting  of  the  New 
England  colonies,  which  he  throttled  almost  to  the  death 
throe ;  what  Tecumseh  was  in  the  internal  shocks  attend- 
ing our  last  war  with  Great  Britain,  —  Pontiac,  a  far  greater 
man  than  either  of  them,  in  council  and  on  the  field,  was 
in  the  strain  and  stress  of  the  occasion  offered  to  him  after 
the  cession  of  Canada.  Pontiac  conceived,  and  to  a  large 
extent  effected,  the  compacted  organization  of  many  of  the 
most  powerful  of  the  Western  tribes,  in  a  conspiracy  for 
crushing  the  English  as  they  were  about  to  take  possession 
of  unbounded  territory  here  in  the  name  and  right  of  the 
British  crown.  Pontiac,  the  chief  of  the  Ottawas,  and  the 
recognized  dictator  of  many  affiliated  tribes,  as  well  as  an 
able  reconciler  of  hostile  tribes,  was  a  master  of  men.  Then 
in  the  vigor  of  his  life,  he  exhibited  signally  that  marked 
characteristic  of  all  the  ablest,  bravest,  and  most  dangerous 

21 


322  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

of  the  native  chiefs  who  have  most  resolutely  resisted  suc- 
cessive European  encroachments  on  their  domain :  namely 
this,  that  while  especially  well  informed  and  familiar  with 
the  resources  and  appliances,  and  supposed  advantages  of  a 
state  of  civilization,  they  have  most  passionately  repelled 
and  scorned  it,  and  stubbornly  avowed  a  preference  for 
their  own  wild  state  of  Nature, — the  forest  and  lake  and 
river,  with  their  free  range,  —  and  the  simple  nakedness  of 
its  indolence  and  activity. 

We  must  allow  Pontiac,  by  anticipation,  this  mention 
here,  because  he  represented  France,  among  the  savages, 
as  its  avenger.  When  he  first  encountered  small  detach- 
ments of  the  English  forces  penetrating  the  lake  and  wil- 
derness highways  to  establish  themselves  in  the  strong- 
holds to  be  yielded  up  by  the  French,  he  seemed  for  a 
brief  interval  disposed  to  reconcile  himself  to  the  change 
of  intruders,  and  to  receive  the  new  comers  with  a  real 
or  a  feigned  .tolerance.  But  his  stern  purpose,  if  not  be- 
fore conceived,  was  soon  wrought  into  a  bold  and  far- 
reaching  design,  with  a  plan  which,  as  a  whole,  and  in  the 
disposal  of  its  parts  and  details,  exhibits  his  own  great 
qualities.  His  plan  was  to  engage  all  the  Indian  tribes 
in  defying  the  hated  intruders  and  keeping  the  heritage 
of  their  fathers  inviolate  for  their  posterity.  So  far  as  he 
could  impart  to  or  rouse  in  other  native  chieftains  his 
own  sad  prescience  of  their  doom,  or  stir  in  them  the  fires 
of  their  own  passions,  he  could  engage  them  in  that  plan. 
He  roamed  amid  the  villages  of  many  scattered  tribes, 
and  to  others  he  sent  messengers  bearing  the  war-belt 
and  the  battle-cry.  He  held  councils,  the  solemn,  medi- 
tative silence  of  which  he  broke  by  impassioned  appeals, 
sharpened  with  bitter  taunts  and  darkened  by  sombre 
prophecies,  in  all  the  fervent  picture-eloquence  of  the  for- 
ests, to  inflame  the  rage  of  his  wild  hearers  and  to  turn 
them  on  the  war-path.  He  found  inflammable  spirits. 
Jealousy  and  hate,  and  what  tried  to  be  scorn,  had  already 


CONSPIRACY  OF  PONTIAC.  323 

nerved  many  chieftains  and  their  tribes  to  attempt  what 
to  them  doubtless  appeared  a  possible  enterprise,  if  they 
entered  upon  it  pledged  to  triumph  or  to  death.  An  Iro- 
quois  sachem,  at  a  conference  in  Philadelphia  in  1761, 
referring  to  the  traps  already  set  by  the  French,  about  to 
be  re-baited  by  the  English,  said  :  "  We  are  penned  up 
like  hogs.  There  are  forts  all  around  us :  we  feel  that 
death  is  coming  upon  us."  The  conspiracy,  the  whole 
aim  of  which  from  the  first  was  futile  and  impossible, 
was  nevertheless  successful  in  many  of  its  details,  and  in 
the  sum  and  shape  of  the  horrors  attendant  upon  that 
success.  The  siege  and  destruction  of  the  lake  and  river 
forts,  and  then  a  ruthless  rage  of  slaughter,  havoc,  and 
burning  on  the  whole  belt  of  frontier  settlements,  were 
the  elements  of  that  savage  campaign  against  civilization. 
The  forts  at  Detroit  and  at  the  present  Pittsburg,  on  the 
forks  of  the  Ohio,  alone  held  out,  and  then  only  through 
sharp  straits  of  peril  and  almost  superhuman  endurance, 
against  the  Indian  foe,  lurking  everywhere  with  a  lynx- 
eyed  glare  and  a  crimson  ferocity.  The  pent-up  garrisons 
in  these  two  defended  posts,  starved  and  sleepless,  listened 
as  messengers,  like  those  to  Job,  brought  tidings  of  woe 
from  all  the  rest. 

In  the  mean  time  the  adventurous  settlers  who  had  scat- 
tered themselves  on  either  side  of  the  Alleghanies,  accept- 
ing the  rough  conditions  of  frontier  life  and  well  matched 
in  resource  and  forest  skill  with  the  natives,  were  sub- 
jected to  the  fury  of  the  wily  and  sanguinary  foe.  The 
horrors  of  those  appalling  scenes  and  events,  in  ghastly 
butcherings,  tortures,  and  mutilations,  with  the  sack  and 
burning  of  the  rude  homesteads,  and  the  hunting  in  the 
woods  for  the  wretched,  starving  fugitives,  have  left 
records  in  our  history  of  the  most  dismal  and  dreary 
tragedies.  It  was  then  and  there  that — midway  in  our 
country's  history — men,  women,  and  children  came  to  know 
the  meaning  and  character  of  Indian  warfare.  Then  and 


324  THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

there  were  scorched  into  the  hearts  of  agonized  and  mad- 
dened beings,  themselves  only  in  a  crude  stage  of  civiliza- 
tion, though  under  Christian  nurture,  a  hate  and  rage 
such  as  only  fiends  in  their  diabolic  ravings  might  be  sup- 
posed to  fire  in  a  human  breast.  We  can  well  understand, 
as  we  read  the  records  and  heed  the  traditions  of  that 
wasted  border,  that  for  years  afterwards  white  men  (who 
alone  survived  in  their  families,  orphaned  or  solitary  by 
those  dire  woes)  lived  only  for  revenge,  to  prowl  in  the 
woods  like  wildcats,  and  deal  the  death-blow  to  every  one 
of  the  red  race — man,  squaw,  or  pappoose — that  they  could 
bring  within  range  of  the  rifle  or /under  the  keen  edge  of 
the  knife.  A  thousand  families  wBre  broken  up,  with  here 
and  there  survivors,  trying,  through  a  treacherous  wilder- 
ness, to  find  their  way  back  to  the  settlements.  From  one 
to  two  thousand  of  the  whites  were  slain.  Sir  William 
Johnson,  the  Indian  Commissioner  for  Indian  affairs  in  New 
York,  by  the  firm  control  which  he  had  acquired  over  the 
tribes  of  the  then  Six  Nations,  succeeded  by  wise  manage- 
ment in  holding  back  all  but  a  strong  party  of  the  Senecas 
from  joining  in  the  wide-spread  conspiracy.  Had  those 
well-trained  and  ferocious  savages  joined  in  the  work  of 
desolation,  doubtless  English  dominion  here  would  have 
encountered  a  staggering  peril.  As  it  was,  the  exposed 
colonists  were  racked  with  dread  uncertainty  as  to  the  con- 
stancy of  these  restrained  fiends,  who  might  at  any  moment 
prove  treacherous,  and  who  were  held  only  by  flatteries, 
gifts,  and  promises.  When  we  note,  as  often  we  may,  the 
assertion  that  Britain  has  always  been  more  fair  and  hu- 
mane than  our  Government  in  dealing  with  the  savages,  we 
cannot  but  pause  upon  certain  facts  on  record  in  that  fear- 
ful crisis  which  look  quite  in  a  contrary  way.  The  British 
commander-in-chief,  Sir  Jeffrey  Amherst,1  anticipated  the 

1  "When,  in  1776,  General  Amherst  was  raised  to  the  peerage,  he  chose  as 
one  of  the  supporters  "  on  the  sinister  a  Canadian  war  Indian,  holding  in  his 
exterior  hand  a  staff  argent,  thereon  a  human  scalp,  proper."  Colliiis's  Peer- 
age, vol.  viii.  p.  176. 


MURDER   OF  PONTIAC.  325 


project  of  some  of  the  most  desperate  spirits  in  our  own 
civil  war,  by  favoring  the  dispersion  among  the  Indians  of 
blankets  infected  with  the  small-pox,  and  the  sending  for 
bloodhounds  to  be  used  in  hunting  the  scalpers.  The  cam- 
paign of  the  bold  and  gallant  Colonel  Bouquet,  with  a 
strong  body  of  provincials,  put  a  period  to  these  border 
massacres,  and  brought  the  conspirators  to  sue  for  peace. 
Pontiac,  raging  under  the  failure  of  his  first  prospering 
enterprise,  made  one  desperate  effort  to  enlist  the  tribes 
farther  West,  on  the  Illinois.  Orders  had  come  from 
France,  in  1763,  to  the  French  officers  to  surrender  to  the 
English  the  strongholds  which  they  still  held  here.  The 
French  traders  openly  and  covertly  abetted  the  futile  effort 
of  Pontiac  to  change  the  scene  of  the  same  struggle,  by 
embarrassing  and  delaying  the  formal  occupation  of  the 
territory  by  the  English  ;  but  there  was  only  delay,  with 
the  mutterings  and  threatenings  of  the  discomfited  French 
and  their  Indian  partisans.  The  triumph  on  the  side  of 
colonization  and  civilization  for  that  line  of  frontier  longi- 
tude was  secure.  The  great  chief,  heartbroken  and  worsted 
in  his  schemes,  was  treacherously  killed  in  the  woods  near 
Cahokia  by  a  drunken  Indian,  bribed  by  an  English  trader, 
in  1769. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

COLONIAL  RELATIONS  WITH   THE  INDIANS. 

THERE  is  matter  of  intensely  exciting  interest  and  of  mo- 
mentous bearing  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  red  man  running 
through  the  whole  colonial  period  of  our  history  before  we 
had  become  a  nation,  with  a  central  power  and  a  common 
responsibility  for  our  acts.  During  this  colonial  period, 
—  beginning  with  the  first  scattered  and  independent  set- 
tlements, from  Acadia  and  Canada,  down  along  the  sea- 
board to  the  Gulf,  and  ending  with  the  war  of  the  Revolu- 
tion,— each  isolated  group  of  colonists  was  of  necessity  left 
to  its  own  methods  and  policy  in  intercourse  and  treatment 
of  the  savages.  There  was  of  course  an  ultimate  reference 
to  the  authority  of  the  different  sovereignties  at  home, 
represented  here  by  their  respective  subjects.  Instructions 
were  from  time  to  time  received  as  to  the  way  in  which  the 
natives  should  be  dealt  with.  But  the  straits  and  emer- 
gencies of  each  feeble  and  exposed  band  of  settlers  had  to 
decide  for  them  their  own  attitude  and  course  of  conduct 
towards  the  aborigines.  It  was  from  the  beginning  a  steady 
struggle  between  the  forces  of  civilization,  aided  by  intelli- 
gence and  arbitrary  power,  and  the  natural  rights  and  the 
impotence  of  barbarians.  The  result  was  an  inevitable 
one;  but  the  wrongs  and  outrages  which  secured  it  sadly 
stain  the  record  of  the  white  man's  triumph. 

This  chapter  by  its  title  covers  the  period  and  the  events 
reaching  from  the  first  settlement  of  the  territory  of  the 
United  States  by  Europeans  down  to  the  Revolutionary 


THE  COLONISTS  AT  THEIR  OWN   CHARGES.  327 

War,  which  left  us  an  independent  people.  It  is  to  be 
limited  in  the  main  to  the  relations  established  by  the  col- 
onists themselves  with  the  natives,  as  it  will  be  convenient 
to  deal  with  the  relations  of  the  mother  country,  as  a 
government  with  the  same  people  and  over  the  same  field, 
in  a  separate  chapter.  A  dividing-line  might  be  drawn  — 
at  first  sharp  and  distinct,  afterwards  becoming  blurred 
—  between  the  periods  and  the  circumstances  within  which 
the  English  colonists,  unrecognized  and  not  interfered  with 
in  this  matter  by  the  mother  country,  disposed  of  all  their 
relations  with  the  savages,  whether  hostile  or  peaceful,  by 
their  own  judgment,  at  their  own  charges,  and  the  period 
and  circumstances  when  foreign  interference  or  help  came 
in  as  a  new  element  in  those  relations.  The  whole  force 
of  the  distinction  between  these  times  and  circumstances 
will  present  itself  to  us  when  we  set  in  the  strong  contrast 
of  the  facts  in  cither  case  the  earliest  with  the  latest  re- 
lations of  the  colonists  with  the  Indians,  —  the  mother 
country  in  the  former  being  an  outside,  indifferent,  and 
unconcerned  observer,  if  even  so  much  as  that ;  while  in 
the  latter  she  was  the  principal  party,  actor,  and  contribu- 
tor of  ways  and  means. 

In  the  early  wars  of  the  New  England  colonists  —  and 
the  same  might  be  said  of  those  of  Virginia  —  with  the 
natives,  the  whole  brunt  of  the  strife,  in  loss  of  life  and 
goods,  and  in  charges  for  military  stores  and  operations, 
came  upon  the  actual  settlers.  The  three  desolating  "  mas- 
sacres," wrought  by  conspiring  Indian  tribes  in  Virginia, 
found  the  colonists  unaided  from  abroad,  and  uncompen- 
sated  for  their  losses  of  property.  In  the  Pequot  war 
the  New  England  colonists  assessed  themselves  for  all  its 
charges.  In  the  crushing  and  almost  exterminating  rav- 
ages of  the  conspiracy  for  their  destruction  by  King  Philip, 
we  find  that  nearly  two  thirds  of  the  plantations  and  towns 
were  either  wholly  or  partially  destroyed ;  that  one  in  ten 
of  the  men  of  military  age  were  victims ;  while  the  expenses 


328  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH    THE   INDIANS. 

and  losses  of  the  war,  including  its  episode  against  the 
Eastern  Indians,  were  estimated  at  "  more  than  one  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds."1  Nearly  one  half  of  this  charge 
fell  upon  the  Bay  Colony.  The  loss  of  Plymouth  Colony 
was  said  to  exceed  the  whole  valuation  of  its  personal  prop- 
erty. But  the  English  exchequer  was  riot  drawn  upon. 
Such  was  the  state  of  things  in  the  earlier  colonial  times. 
In  the  later  period,  covering  the  whole  century  previous  to 
the  war  of  the  Revolution,  Great  Britain  came  in  as  a 
party,  with  a  stake  of  her  own  at  hazard,  amid  steadily 
increasing  risks,  demanding  mightier  efforts  and  heavier 
charges,  till  at  the  settlement  the  cost  proved  to  be  enor- 
mous. This  of  course  was  during  the  struggle  between 
France  and  England  for  the  dominion  of  this  continent,  the 
colonies  coming  in  for  attention  either  as  allies  or  as  need- 
ing protection.  Whenever  mutterings  of  war  or  open 
hostilities  manifested  themselves  abroad  between  the  two 
nations,  their  colonists  on  this  side  of  the  water,  willingly 
or  unwillingly,  were  compelled  to  imitate  the  doings  of 
their  respective  principals.  As  we  have  said,  the  cost  to 
England  of  extinguishing  French  dominion  here  was  enor- 
mous. But  a  heavier  penalty  and  sacrifice  than  that  was 
to  be  visited  upon  her  as  a  direct  consequence,  —  even  this 
of  the  loss  of  her  colonies.  At  the  close  of  the  French 
and  Indian  War  her  prime  minister  called  together  the 
resident  agents  of  the  colonies  then  in  London,  laid  the  bill 
before  them,  with  the  amount  of  the  debt  incurred  "  for 
their  defence,"  and  suggested  that  they  should  contribute 
to  her  revenue  by  a  tax,  for  the  relief  of  the  suffering  and 
protecting  mother.  The  loyalists,  in  our  days  of  rebellion, 
thought  it  was  but  fair  that  we  should  be  thus  taxed.  The 
patriot  party  raised  a  question  whether  England  came  in 
upon  a  strife,  which  the  colonies  had  long  maintained  at 
their  own  charges,  for  the  motherly  purpose  of  protect- 
ing them,  or  for  securing  aggrandizement  in  land  and 

1  Records  of  the  Commissioners  of  the  United  Colonies,  iii.  508. 


PERMANENT    COLONISTS.  329 

dominion  for  herself.  At  any  rate  the  colonists  thought 
they  had  borne  their  full  share  of  the  expense  in  life  and 
treasure. 

We  turn  now  to  the  earlier  colonial  relations  with  the 
savages. 

There  are  some  general  statements  applicable  to  all  the 
original  settlements  made  by  Europeans  on  our  present 
domain;  excepting  always  those  invading  raids  of  the 
Spaniards,  which  can  hardly  be  classed  under  the  designa- 
tion of  settlements. 

In  the  first  place,  it  may  be  said  with  equal  truth  alike  of 
the  French,  the  Dutch,  the  English,  and  the  Swedish  ad- 
venturers who  came  hither  with  a  view  to  the  permanent 
occupancy  of  American  soil, — for  tillage,  traffic,  and  com- 
merce,— that  they  had  in  mind  no  ptirpose  of  conquest,  or 
of  taking  possession  by  violence,  through  war  with  the  sav- 
ages, or  by  driving  them  clear  of  the  territory.  Not  a  hint 
or  intimation,  I  think,  can  be  found  in  any  of  the  primary 
sources  of  our  earliest  colonial  history  that  the  colonists  in 
either  settlement  felt  before  their  coming  that  they  would 
have  to  fight  for  a  foothold,  or  even  contemplated  the  neces- 
sity of  so  doing.  Of  course  they  were  wholly  ignorant  of 
the  numbers  and  the  strength  of  the  native  tribes.  But 
they  seem  to  have  taken  for  granted  the  sufficiency  of  free 
wild  space  for  themselves  and  the  natives  to  live  in  amity. 
Doubtless,  too,  they  felt  sure  that  the  barbarians  would 
welcome  them  as  bringing  with  them  the  blessings  of  civ- 
ilization, the  tools  and  implements,  the  food,  the  seed,  the 
clothing,  the  habits,  the  redeemed  humanity,  which  the 
savages  would  be  so  ready  to  accept  with  an  overflowing 
gratitude  as  a  substitute  for  their  rude  resources  and  their 
benighted,  bewildered,  and  dismal  way  of  life.  But  in  the 
last  resort,  knowing  themselves  to  be  of  a  nobler  stock  than 
the  red  men,  privileged  too  with  a  higher  intelligence,  and 
above  all  armed  with  deadly  weapons  in  comparison  with 
which  the  bows  arid  the  stone  hatchets  of  the  Indians  were 


330  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

as  toys,  it  was  enough  for  the  white  man  to  feel  that  he 
was  able  to  hold  his  ground. 

Again,  the  early  colonial  enterprises  were  all  feeble,  and 
with  scarce  an  exception  attended  with  sharp  and  almost 
extinguishing  disaster,  in  which,  if  the  Indians  appear  at 
all,  it  is  simply  to  give  relief.  Often  did  they  perform  these 
acts  of  mercy  to  wretched  white  men  in  their  extremities. 
As  has  been  said  before,  these  kindly  acts  of  the  savages 
were  in  every  case  ill  requited.  The  Spanish  invaders  of 
the  south  of  the  continent  and  the  first  French  voyagers 
at  the  north,  after  partaking  of  a  gentle  wilderness  hos- 
pitality, both  kidnapped  some  of  the  Indians  and  carried 
them  across  the  ocean,  leaving  their  intimidated  relatives 
to  wonder  over  their  fate. 

Neither  had  our  Eifglish  seamen  to  our  own  coasts  failed 
to  commit  the  same  treacherous  acts.  Captain  Weymouth 
himself  publicly  told  the  story  in  London  of  his  kidnap- 
ping five  Indians  at  Pemaquid,  in  1605,  though  he  said  that 
he  treated  them  well,  and  that  his  object  was  to  promote 
civilization  and  trade.  Again,  in  1614,  Captain  Thomas 
Hunt,  without  the  knowledge  of  Captain  John  Smith  un- 
der whose  orders  he  was,  kidnapped  twenty-seven  Indians, 
in  or  near  Plymouth  harbor,  who  were  sold  in  Spain  for 
slaves.  By  the  humanity  of  Spanish  friars  some  of  these 
were  redeemed  and  sent  back.  Some  of  the  tribe  to  which 
these  belonged — the  Nausits — were  those  who  had  the  first 
encounter  with  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  on  their  landing. 
The  Pilgrims  in  their  first  straits  of  hunger,  while  explor- 
ing for  a  permanent  place  of  settlement,  helped  themselves 
to  some  of  the  buried  corn-heaps  of  the  natives.  The  jus- 
tifying excuse  for  the  act  was  necessity,  and  a  sort  of  res- 
titution was  afterwards  made  to  the  owners. 

First  impressions  made  and  received  when  strangers 
come  into  intercourse  often  decide  the  future  relations  be- 
tween the  parties.  If  we  could  learn  how  the  natives  were 
affected  by  their  first  knowledge  of  the  whites,  we  should 


FIRST  SALES  OP  LAND.  331 

probably  find  that  they  regarded  the  English  as  a  some- 
what unscrupulous  people. 

Further,  we  must  note  that  it  soon  came  to  be  under- 
stood that  the  relations  of  Europeans  as  they  reached  here, 
towards  the  native  races,  would  be  decided  in  each  case 
by  the  intent  and  purpose  of  each  party  of  the  strangers 
as  they  appeared,  whether  that  purpose  involved  transient 
traffic,  as  in  the  fisheries  and  the  fur-trade,  or  permanent 
occupancy  of  the  soil,  with  extending  farms  and  towns. 
The  Dutch  and  the  French  might,  for  their  purposes,  have 
had  peaceful  relations  with  the  savages,  to  their  mutual 
benefit.  The  English  colonists,  radiating  from  their  orig- 
inal landings,  and  steadily  extending  into  the  interior, 
found,  for  obvious  reasons,  that  their  relations  with  the 
natives  must  be  hostile.  Why  ?  Simply  because  the  tem- 
per and  habits,  the  prejudices  and  purposes  of  English 
yeomen  made  it  utterly  impossible  for  them  to  have  the 
savages  as  co-residents  on  the  soil,  or  even  as  proximate 
neighbors.  In  fifty  years,  more  than  as  many  English 
towns  had  been  planted  on  our  shores  and  in  the  nearest 
border  of  the  wilderness,  in  valleys,  on  river  bottoms  and 
mill  streams.  In  the  skirting  forests  the  savages  still  har- 
bored, and  the  primary  antagonisms  of  the  two  modes  of 
life  at  once  presented  themselves  with  sharp  and  practical 
issues.  When  King  Philip  found  that  the  value  of  the  land 
which  he  had  sold  to  the  whites  was  so  enhanced  by  their 
use  of  it,  he  regretted  that  he  had  parted  with  it.  Con- 
spicuously intelligent  as  he  was  for  a  savage,  and  proudly 
independent  in  spirit,  like  the  other  great  conspiring  chief- 
tains with  whom  we  have  come  into  conflict,  he  stoutly 
withstood  civilization  and  what  was  offered  to  him  as 
Christianity.  He  forbade  all  mission  work,  all  attempts 
to  convert  his  people.  He  preferred  by  inclination  and  con- 
viction the  wild  state  as  best  and  fittest  for  them.  Such 
views  of  Christianity  as  he  had  formed  from  contact  with 
its  white  disciples  and  the  converts  they  had  made  from 


332  COLONIAL  RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

the  red  men  were  unfavorable,  and  he  repelled  it.  He 
complained  that  his  own  people  were  withdrawn  from  alle- 
giance and  tribute  to  him,  and  that  the  white  man's  laws 
and  court  processes  were  forced  upon  him.  The  white 
man's  fencings  and  fields  prevented  free  travel,  while  the 
fencings  did  not  prevent  the  white  man's  cattle  breaking 
through  them  and  trampling  the  Indians'  corn.  Though 
the  whites  seem  to  have  taken  for  granted  that  a  nomadic 
roving  or  a  transient  occupancy  over  wild  territory  gave  no 
valid  title  to  it  to  barbarians,  yet  the  Indians  evidently 
thought  it  theirs,  at  least  as  much  as  it  was  the  white 
man's.  So  it  was  all  over  the  continent.  When  the  French 
colonist  Ribault,  entering  the  St.  John  River  in  Florida, 
in  1562,  quietly  set  up  by  night  a  stone  pillar  bearing  the 
arms  of  France,  and  took  possession  for  his  king,  the  sav- 
ages, seeing  it  the  next  morning,  gazed  upon  it  with  stolid 
bewilderment,  regarding  it  as  an  altar  of  worship,  not  as  a 
royal  prerogative,  not  realizing  that  their  territory  had 
passed  from  their  possession.  When  the  Popham  colony, 
in  1607,  took  their  position  for  a  fort  on  the  Sagadahoc, 
the  natives  objected  to  the  effrontery  of  the  act,  as  no  per- 
mission had  been  asked  and  no  compensation  offered.  In 
1631  a  Dutchman,  in  Delaware,  had  set  up  a  post  with  the 
arms  of  the  Dutch.  An  Indian  pulled  it  down.  His  chief 
had  him  killed  to  appease  the  Dutchman.  This  stirred  up 
the  Indians,  and  they  "  massacred  "  every  one  in  the  Dutch 
fort.  When  Lord  Baltimore  was  making  his  first  settle- 
ment on  the  Potomac,  he  asked  the  chief  if  he  might  plant 
himself  there.  The  cautious  savage  replied  "  that  he  would 
not  bid  him  go,  neither  would  he  bid  him  stay;  he  must  use 
his  own  discretion." 

When  the  four  New  England  colonies  confederated  them- 
selves in  1643,  the  preamble  to  their  covenant  assumed  a 
very  lordly  tone  towards  the  natives,  thus  :  — 

"  Whereas  we  live  encompassed  with  people  of  several  nations 
and  strange  languages,  which  hereafter  may  prove  injurious  to  us  or 


THE  WAR   OP  RACE.  333 

our  posterity;  and  forasmuch  as  the  natives  have  formerly  com- 
mitted sundry  insolences  and  outrages  upon  several  Plantations 
of  the  English,  and  have  of  late  combined  themselves  against  us, 
etc." 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  our  aborigines  were  the  first 
of  the  class  of  human  beings  called  "  heathens  "  which  our 
English  ancestors  had  ever  known  or  seen.  The  theory 
about  them  was  that  they  were  a  wrecked  and  doomed  por- 
tion of  the  race  of  Adam,  under  a  curse, — the  spoil  of  the 
Devil  for  eternity.  The  human  form,  with  a  mere  fragment 
of  the  intellectual  and  moral  endowment  of  our  race,  could 
secure  at  best  only  pity  for  such  creatures.  It  was  among 
the  rough  frontiersmen  of  the  West  that  the  saying  origi- 
nated, that  the  Indian  has  no  more  soul  than  a  buffalo. 
Our  ancestors  allowed  him  a  soul,  though  under  the  circum- 
stances it  was  a  questionable  endowment.  It  may  fairly  be 
inferred  from  the  estimate  our  fathers  made  of  the  natives, 
that  they  believed  that  existence  had  no  intrinsic  value  for 
an  Indian.  Taking  into  view  also  the  fact  that  the  whole 
history  of  humanity  on  this  globe  gives  us  but  a  succession 
of  wars  of  races,  the  strong  against  the  weak,  the  lighter 
color  against  the  darker  color,  the  civilized  against  the 
barbarous,  we  have  to  add  to  it  also  another, — that  the 
claim  to  possess,  under  divine  mercy,  a  true  and  pure  re- 
ligion, has  been  made  the  pretext  for  visiting  what  is  called 
the  divine  wrath  upon  all  who  are  left  in  the  darkness  of 
heathenism. 

Our  colonial  period  covers  a  series  of  woful  and  racking 
experiences  to  the  native  tribes,  uniformly  disastrous  to 
them  and  beyond  measure  demoralizing  to  them  as  regards 
any  form  of  permanent  good  which  they  might  have  de- 
rived from  intercourse  with  the  whites.  All  the  tribes  that 
had  any  dealings  with  the  Europeans,  hostile  or  friendly,  and 
even  some  distant  tribes  that  had  as  yet  been  unmolested 
in  their  forest  recesses,  were  from  the  first  parties  to  all 
the  fierce  strifes  waged  by  the  white  men  of  rival  nation- 


334  COLONIAL  RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

alities  to  obtain  the  mastery  in  dominion  here.  The  con- 
tests in  their  prolonged  and  embittered  animosities,  with 
devastation,  massacre,  and  the  heightening  of  all  the  hor- 
rors of  civilized  warfare  so  called,  were  all  of  them  waged 
at  the  expense  of  the  natives  for  their  own  soil,  and  they 
were  sure  to  be  the  chief  sufferers  whatever  might  be  the 
result  of  each  collision,  and  whichever  party  prevailed. 
But  none  the  less,  under  the  fatuity  of  their  destiny, 
they  became  discreditable  allies  of  one  or  another  of  the 
contending  nationalities,  and  needless  foes  of  each  other 
in  quarrels  not  their  own.  The  same  fatuity  of  circum- 
stances which  first  assigned  them  to  one  or  another  party 
as  friend  or  foe,  forced  them,  in  the  changing  relations  of 
all  parties,  to  shift  their  alliance  here  and  there  as  fate  im- 
pelled them.  The  Spaniards  never  concerned  themselves 
with  any  anxiet}r  or  sense  of  responsibility  as  to  the  terri- 
torial rights  of  the  savages:  the  Church's  sacred  preroga- 
tive carried  all  other  claims  with  it.  Nor  was  it  within  the 
purpose  or  practice  of  the  Spaniards  to  become  colonists 
or  agriculturists  through  any  outlay  or  labor  of  their  own, 
in  occupying  and  subduing  wild  lands.  They  looked  for  an 
easier  and  a  more  exciting  thrift.  The  leaders,  officials, 
and  functionaries  of  their  invading  columns  did  indeed 
seek  to  become  proprietors  of  islands  and  of  immense 
stretches  of  territory  for  mining  or  cultivation,  or  for  their 
products.  But  while  the  fee  of  these  conquests  might 
vest  in  Spanish  nobles,  hidalgoes,  or  ecclesiastics,  the  work 
upon  them  was  to  be  done  by  the  imported  African 
slaves,  and  by  the  natives  reduced  to  the  same  condition. 
And  it  was  the  Catholic  monarch,  not  the  natives,  who 
transferred  the  title  to  these  fair  islands,  fields,  forests, 
and  mines,  and  issued  patents  for  their  possession  and 
government.  Were  it  not  for  statutes  of  limitations,  if 
the  sense  of  natural  justice  and  the  benevolent  impulse 
for  the  righting  of  all  wrongs  should  ever  reach  a  par- 
oxysm over  the  hearts  of  civilized  man,  many  descendants 


PURCHASE   OP  INDIAN  TITLES.  335 

of  the  despoiled  would  furnish  business  for  a  high  court 
of  claims. 

A  selection  from  our  local  annals  of  a  few  of  the  numer- 
ous cases  recorded  of  the  sale  of  parcels  of  land  or  of 
stretches  of  territory,  by  the  Indians  to  the  whites,  may 
help  us  to  form  some  idea  of  the  nature  of  the  transaction 
and  of  the  conditions  involved  in  it.  It  is  to  be  observed 
that  the  transaction  was  always  a  loose  one,  whatever  at- 
tempt may  in  any  instance  have  been  made  to  make  the 
terms  and  warrants  formal.  There  was  in  most  cases  an 
utter  neglect  of  all  definiteness  and  precision  as  to  boun- 
daries ;  a  disregard  of  all  rival  claims  that  might  be  set  up 
by  other  parties  than  the  sachem  who  made  the  transfer; 
and  no  absolute  quit-claim  as  to  any  reserved  rights  which 
might  be  implied,  and  which  in  many  cases,  as  it  will 
appear,  were  afterwards  asserted. 

We  find  frequent  positive  and  even  boastful  assertions  in 
our  early  New  England  records,  —  like  that  repeated  by  In- 
crease Mather,  —  that  till  Philip's  war,  in  1675,  the  English 
did  not  occupy  a  foot  of  land  without  fair  purchase.  This 
assertion,  if  true  in  the  spirit  of  it  as  indicating  the  in- 
tent and  will  of  the  colonists,  is  subject  to  so  many  abating 
and  qualifying  conditions  as  greatly  to  reduce  the  seeming 
equity  of  the  transactions  to  which  it  refers. 

There  were  honest  attempts  from  the  first,  on  the  part 
of  the  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  authorities,  to  prevent 
the  trespass  of  white  men  on  land  that  had  not  been  pur- 
chased from  the  Indians.  Intruders,  in  some  cases,  on 
complaint  being  made,  were  compelled  to  vacate.  Laws 
were  passed  to  prevent  individual  bargains.  So  far  as  the 
English  were  concerned,  James  II.,  by  proclamation,  made 
the  right  of  purchasing  territory  from  the  Indians  exclu- 
sively a  government  prerogative.  The  colonies  and  States 
have  maintained  the  same  prerogative  ;  but  the  restriction 
has  been  little  regarded.  In  some  cases  the  Indians  invited 
white  men  to  settle  and  plant  among  them ;  but  the  privi- 


336  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

lege  granted  was  considered  revocable  by  the  Indians  when- 
ever they  were  tired  of  their  company.  Plymouth  court 
made  an  enactment  that  certain  of  the  best  necks  of  land 
in  their  bounds,  —  like  Mount  Hope,  Pocasset,  etc.,  —  as 
being  most  suitable  and  convenient  for  the  Indians,  should 
not  be  purchased  from  them.  In  Increase  Mather's  His- 
tory of  Philip's  War,  he  quotes  the  well-known  letter  ad- 
dressed to  him  by  Josiah  Win  slow,  of  Plymouth,  in  which 
the  writer  says  that  the  court  strictly  reserved  the  first- 
mentioned  sites  to  the  Indians  to  prevent  their  parting  with 
them,  which  otherwise  they  would  have  done.  It  is  in  this 
letter  that  Winslow  makes  the  positive  assertion,  that  "  be- 
fore these  present  troubles  broke  out  the  English  did  not 
possess  one  foot  of  land  in  this  colony  but  what  was  fairly 
obtained  by  honest  purchase  of  the  Indian  proprietors." 
Yet  Dr.  Mather  begins  his  History  with  this  sentence : 
"  That  the  heathen  people  amongst  whom  we  live,  and 
whose  land  the  Lord  God  of  our  fathers  hath  given  to  us 
for  a  rightful  possession,"  etc.  Dr.  Mather  furnishes  evi- 
dences—  of  which  there  are  so  many  more — :of  that  relent- 
less and  vindictive,  and  we  may  say  savage,  spirit  which 
burned  in  the  hearts  of  magistrates,  ministers,  and  people 
as  the  consequence  of  what  they  had  suffered  in  their  very 
first  wars  from  the  exasperated  savages.  This  was  inva- 
riably the  effect  on  the  feelings  of  whites  who  had  had 
experience  of  Indian  warfare.  Not  one  throb  of  pity  or 
sympathy  for  the  natives  softens  the  bitterness  poured  out 
upon  them  by  the  Mathers.  More  rancorous  even  are  the 
terms  used  of  the  Indians  by  the  Rev.  William  Hubbard 
of  Ipswich,  whom  the  Court  made  the  historian  of  New 
England.  He  calls  them  "  treacherous  villains,"  "  the 
dross  of  mankind,"  "the  dregs  and  lees  of  the  earth," 
"  faithless  and  ungrateful  monsters,"  "  the  caitiff  Philip," 
etc.  Mather  said,  "  The  Lord  in  judgment  had  been  riding 
among  us  on  a  red  horse." 

Between  holding  lands  by  fair  purchase  from  the  In- 


PURCHASES   OF  INDIAN   LANDS.  337 

dians  and  receiving  them  as  "  a  rightful  possession  from 
the  Lord  God,"  there  is  certainly  a  confusion  of  title. 

In  1610  Captain  West,  of  the  Virginia  Colony,  purchased 
of  "  King "  Powhatan  the  region  around  the  present  city 
of  Richmond  —  whatever  that  might  include  —  for  a  small 
quantity  of  copper. 

In  1626  Governor  Minuit  bought  the  Island  of  Manhat- 
tan (New  York)  for  sixty  guilders  (twenty-four  dollars). 

In  1634  the  Maryland  Indians  agreed  that  Lord  Balti- 
more's Company,  for  the  consideration  of  some  cloth,  tools, 
and  trinkets,  should  share  their  town  till  the  harvest ;  and 
then,  on  further  like  consideration,  the  Indians  would  move 
off,  leaving  the  white  man  in  possession.  It  is  intimated, 
however,  that  the  accommodating  tribe  were  in  dread  of 
being  driven  from  their  land  by  a  band  of  neighboring  red 
men. 

In  1638  the  Swedes  bought  Christiana  of  the  Indians  for 
a  kettle  and  some  trifling  wares. 

In  1638  the  island  of  Rhode  Island  was  purchased  of  the 
chiefs  by  Roger  Williams's  company  for  "  forty  fathoms  of 
white  beads."  But  Williams  says  that  it  was  "for  love 
and  favor  with  the  great  sachem,"  not  for  an  equivalent 
value,  that  he  received  it. 

In  1638  New  Haven  was  sold  to  the  whites  by  sachems, 
for  "  twelve  coats  of  English  cloth,  twelve  alchemy  [metal] 
spoons,  twelve  hoes,  twelve  hatchets,  twelve  porringers, 
twenty-four  knives,  and  four  cases  of  French  knives  and 
scissors." 

In  1642  Gorton  and  his  company  bought  Shawomet,  of 
Miantonomo  and  others,  for  one  hundred  and  forty-four 
fathoms  of  wampum. 

In  1666  the  site  of  Newark  in  New  Jersey  was  paid  for 
by  fifty  double  hands  of  powder,  one  hundred  bars  of  lead; 
of  axes,  coats,  pistols,  and  hoes,  twenty  each ;  of  guns, 
kettles,  and  swords,  ten  each ;  four  blankets,  four  barrels 
of  beer,  two  pairs  of  "  breetches,"  fifty  knives,  eight  hun- 

22 


338  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

dred  and  fifty  fathoms  of  wampum,  "  two  ankers  of  liquors, 
or  something  equivalent,  and  three  troopers'  coats."  This 
formidable  inventory  indicates  either  that  the  Indians  had 
become  more  appreciative  of  their  land  and  better  skilled 
in  bargaining,  or  that  the  white  purchasers  had  become 
more  conscionable. 

In  1670  Staten  Island  passed  to  a  white  owner  for  four 
hundred  fathoms  of  wampum  and  a  number  of  guns,  axes, 
kettles,  and  watch-coats. 

The  first  settlers  of  Boston,  besides  buying  out  the  right 
of  the  lonely  first  English  occupant,  paid  a  trifle  to  a  sur- 
vivor of  the  tribe  killed  off  by  the  plague,  and  again  to  his 
grandson,  in  1685. 

The  sea-shore  town  of  Beverly,  with  an  Indian  village 
and  "  improvements,"  was  purchased  for  £6  6s.  Sd. 

The  famous  "  Walking  Purchase  "  of  Pennsylvania  land 
by  the  Quakers  is  variously  viewed,  as  a  fair  transaction,  or 
as  an  adroit  trick  of  slyness  against  simplicity. 

To  one  who  should  care  to  pursue  and  probe  to  the  bot- 
tom any  single  case  of  controversy  between  the  colonists 
and  the  Indians,  which  after  being  aggravated  ended  in 
ruthless  slaughter,  each  side  complaining  that  the  other 
was  the  first  aggressor,  that  of  King  Philip's  war,  in 
1675  —  involving,  relatively,  the  most  formidable  conspiracy 
ever  formed  among  the  natives,  and  at  one  time  threaten- 
ing the  absolute  extermination  of  the  whites — would  furnish 
the  most  suggestive  instance.  Indeed  this  war,  with  its 
provocations,  suspicions,  and  wrongs  on  either  side,  has 
been  made  a  signal  example  of  pleading  and  championship 
in  our  local  histories.  No  Indian  historian  has  left  us  the 
relation  of  its  conduct  and  causes,  from  his  point  of  view. 
But  though  the  whites  had  the  whole  field  for  self-justifica- 
tion at  the  time,  and  find  their  side  well  argued  in  most  of 
t)ur  sober  and  elaborate  histories  from  their  day  to  our  own, 
there  are  not  wanting  vigorous,  fair-minded,  and  effective 
pleaders  who  have  told  the  story  from  the  Indian  point  of 


KING  PHILIP'S  WAR.  339 

view,  in  a  way  to  vindicate  Philip  and  his  followers  as  alto- 
gether justifiable  in  their  course  of  resistance  to  the  white 
man's  wrongs  and  outrages.  These  Indian  advocates  have 
cast  upon  our  ancestral  magistrates  and  soldiers  the  burden 
of  what  to  us  seems  inhuman,  and,  of  course,  unchristian. 

In  the  abundance  and  variety  of  the  printed  pages  relat- 
ing to  the  right  and  the  wrong  in  Philip's  war,  it  would 
hardly  be  worth  our  while  to  attempt  another  discussion  of 
it.  It  is  very  easy  to  make  and  strengthen  a  plea  on  either 
side,  for  each  had  a  cause  and  found  justification  for  stand- 
ing for  it,  even  to  the  most  dire  extremities.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  our  sympathy,  at  least,  goes  with  the  barbarous 
victims  of  their  own  blind  and  dauntless  effort  to  resist 
what  we  call  their  destiny ;  and  that  the  weight  of  con- 
demnation must  come  on  the  English  for  suspicions  and 
unwise  measures  and  actual  wrongs,  in  the  early  stages  of 
the  strife.  They  were  the  intruders ;  they  were  arrogant 
and  overbearing ;  they  were  the  stronger  party,  and,  in  pro- 
fession at  least,  held  themselves  more  intelligently  bound 
to  justice,  mercy,  and  righteousness.  The  blame,  I  say,  is 
with  them  in  the  opening  of  the  strife.  But  as  it  advanced, 
and  in  their  dread  consternation  as  it  strengthened  in  ex- 
tent and  horror  and  success ;  as  their  frontiers  were  deso- 
lated, and  fire,  massacre,  and  torture  came  nearer  and 
nearer  to  their  centre, — the  yell,  the  tomahawk,  the  scalping- 
knife,  and  the  torch  working  up  the  nightmare  of  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  their  scattered  settlements, — we 
can  no  longer  interpose  our  scruples  as  to  acts  or  appre- 
hensions of  the  exasperated  and  almost  desperate  colonists. 
Probably  we  cannot  overstrain  the  palliation  we  are  dis- 
posed to  find  for  the  whites,  alike  in  their  opinion  of  the 
natural  fiendishness  of  the  Indian  character  and  their  hor- 
ror of  Indian  warfare,  after  their  first  dire  experience  of 
both.  White  men  all  over  this  warring  globe  have  gene- 
rally suspended  hostilities  in  the  dark  hours  of  night,  if 
only  that  they  might  distinguish  between  friend  and  foe ; 


340  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

but  the  darkness  was  the  time  for  the  Indian's  revelry  in 
horrors.  The  Indian,  in  his  warfare  with  the  English, 
availed  himself  of  all  those  resources  of  his  own  which 
compensated  his  lack  of  the  white  man's  means.  The  pa- 
tience with  which  the  savage  would  lie  in  the  covert  of  the 
thicket,  perhaps  for  one  or  several  days,  to  watch  the  hus- 
bandman who  might  pass  to  his  field  or  clearing,  made  the 
whole  space  around  a  settlement,  and  long  reaches  between 
the  settlements,  haunted  as  with  imps  of  mischief.  The 
savages,  soon  learning  of  the  Sunday  habits  of  the  English 
in  their  rude  temples,  would  steal  upon  the  cabins,  where 
only  infants  and  the  infirm  were  left,  and  ply  the  tomahawk, 
the  scalping-knife,  and  the  torch.  They  dashed  the  infants 
against  rock  or  tree  before  the  eyes  of  their  mothers  ;  they 
maimed  and  slaughtered  the  cattle  ;  they  bore  their  prison- 
ers off  for  unnamed  tortures.  But  it  was  their  onset  by 
night,  or  before  the  gray  of  morning,  on  an  unsuspecting 
group  of  sleepers  in  the  rude  dwellings  on  the  edge  of 
the  wilderness,  with  their  yells  and  whoops,  that  heaped 
the  dreads  of  their  warfare.  This  experience,  with  all  the 
variations  of  ferocity,  malignity,  and  atrocity,  was  espe- 
cially harrowing  for  those  who  shared  the  realities  of 
Philip's  dark  conspiracy,  and  it  struck  deeply  and  burned 
sharply  into  their  hearts  and  minds  their  hate  of  the 
Indian  as  an  enemy. 

I  have  selected  King  Philip's  war  in  1675,  rather  than 
the  earlier  Pequot  war  in  1636,  as  affording  the  specimen 
case  for  presenting  all  the  elements  which  enter  into  a  his- 
torical examination  and  discussion  of  the  causes  and  occa- 
sion and  conduct  of  a  bitter  strife  between  the  English  colo- 
nists and  those  upon  whose  lands  and  rights  they  were  tres- 
passing. Whatever  was  the  territorial  tenure  of  the  natives 
here,  they  were  justified  in  maintaining  it,  certainly  against 
those  who  with  no  claim  at  all  were  evidently  bent  upon 
dispossessing  them.  The  most  significant  and  distinguish- 
ing quality  in  that  war  was,  that  the  readiness  with  which 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  341 

the  master  mind  of  the  great  Indian  chieftain  succeeded  in 
engaging  in  his  conspiracy  so  comprehensive  a  body  of  the 
natives  —  many  of  them  not  of  his  own  tribe —  showed  how 
widespread  was  the  hatred  of  the  English,  and  how  easily 
the  Indians  could  be  banded  against  them.  Another  excep- 
tional incident  in  that  war  was  that  the  whites  had  no  In- 
dian allies,  saving  only  a  few  individual  informers,  spies, 
and  guides  who  were  faithless  to  their  own  race.  Some  of 
the  more  melancholy  complications  and  consequences  of 
King  Philip's  war,  as  thwarting  the  best  intentioned 
schemes  formed  by  the  most  humane  of  the  Massachusetts 
people  for  the  civilization  and  security  of  the  natives,  will 
present  themselves  in  our  dealing  with  another  theme. 

The  Pequot  war  of  1636,  which  was  the  first  in  the 
series  of  bloody  and  well-nigh  exterminating  campaigns  of 
the  New  Englanders  against  the  natives,  involved  some 
peculiar  elements,  which  at  least  in  their  own  judgment  re- 
lieved the  former  of  all  blame  for  what  they  did,  and  even 
gave  them  the  honorable  merit  of  avengers  of  wrong.  The 
Pequots  —  inhabiting  the  finest  spaces  in  Connecticut,  ex- 
tending to  the  Hudson  River— were  a  fierce  and  numerous 
tribe,  who  had  driven  off  the  former  occupants  of  the  terri- 
tory in  a  series  of  conflicts,  and  so  held  by  recent  conquest. 
The  English  had  consented  to  their  own  proffers  of  amity. 
A  feud  existed  between  them  and  their  neighbors  the  Narra- 
gansetts  in  Rhode  Island,  who  instigated  the  whites,  upon 
provocations  which  they  soon  received,  to  accept  them  as 
allies  against  the  Pequots.  Even  Roger  Williams  became 
the  adviser  and  efficient  helper  of  the  magistrates  and  sol- 
diers of  the  other  colonies  in  the  exterminating  campaign 
which  was  soon  opened  against  them.  The  Pequots  had 
committed  a  succession  of  murders,  on  the  land  and  river 
and  bay,  of  individuals  and  small  parties  of  the  whites  who 
had  first  ventured  for  trade  or  settlement  upon  their  terri- 
tories. They  had  accompanied  these  deeds  with  mutilations 
of  the  bodies  of  their  victims,  and  with  defiances  and  taunts 


342  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

of  the  English.  Most  summary  was  the  vengeance  which 
they  had  thus  provoked.  No  feature  of  savage  warfare 
was  lacking  in  the  night  assault,  the  burnings,  the  impal- 
ings,  the  promiscuous  slaughter,  the  pursuit  into  swamps, 
by  which  the  whites  with  red  allies  extinguished  that  fierce 
tribe,  reserving  only  a  remnant  to  be  sold  for  slaves.  A 
modern  historian  must  be  excused  from  relating,  as  he 
could  not  essay  to  relieve,  the  sadness  and  shame  of  the 
truthful  record  of  the  conduct  of  the  English  in  that  dark 
episode,  closed  with  their  perfidy  in  sacrificing  the  noble 
Miantonomo. 

We  may  infer  somewhat  of  the  opinion  held  beforehand 
by  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  of  the  sort  of  human  beings 
they  were  to  find  here,  from  what  the  excellent  Governor 
Bradford  tells  us  was  in  the  minds  of  his  associates  in 
Holland  when  they  were  hesitating  in  their  purpose  to 
cross  the  ocean  as  exiles.  He  writes :  "  The  place  they 
had  thoughts  on  was  some  of  those  vast  and  unpeopled 
countries  of  America  which  are  fruitful  and  fit  for  habi- 
tation, being  devoid  of  all  civil  inhabitants,  where  there  are 
only  salvage  and  brutish  men,  which  range  up  and  down 
little  otherwise  than  the  wild  beasts  of  the  same."  This 
was  written  many  years  after  Bradford  had  been  living 
here  among  the  Indians,  and  had  had  full  knowledge  of 
them.1 

Cotton  Mather  2  writes :  "  These  parts  were  then  covered 
with  nations  of  barbarous  Indians  and  infidels,  in  whom  the 
Prince  of  the  power  of  the  air  did  work  as  a  spirit ;  nor 
could  it  be  expected  that  nations  of  wretches,  whose  whole 
religion  was  the  most  explicit  sort  of  Devil-worship,  should 
not  be  acted  by  the  Devil  to  engage  in  some  early  and 
bloody  action  for  the  extinction  of  a  plantation  so  con- 
trary to  his  interests  as  that  of  New  England  was."  He 
calls  Satan  "the  old  landlord"  of  the  country.  It  cer- 
tainly must  have  seemed  to  the  Indians  that  the  landlord 

1  Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth.  2  Magnalia,  vii.  6. 


SALE  OF  ARMS  TO   INDIANS.  343 

had  not  improved  upon  his  tenantry  by  substituting  white 
for  red  men. 

A  journal  written  in  the  Dutch  province,  at  Albany,  New 
York,  soon  after  1640,  traces  the  beginnings  of  discordant 
relations  with  the  neighboring  Indians  to  the  misdoings  of 
the  whites.  The  writer  says,  that,  instead  of  trading,  as  a 
company  and  by  system,  with  the  natives,  each  man  set  up 
for  himself,  roamed  in  the  wilderness  for  free  traffic,  and 
was  mastered  by  a  jealous  selfishness.  They  drew  upon 
themselves  contempt  instead  of  respect  from  the  Indians 
by  over  familiarity, —  admitting  them  to  their  cabins,  feast- 
ing and  trifling  with  them,  and  selling  them  guns,  powder, 
and  bullets.  At  least  four  hundred  armed  savages  were 
then  found  between  the  Dutch  settlements  and  Canada, 
and  were  thus  placed  at  an  unfair  and  mischievous  advan- 
tage over  other  Indians.  These  charges  relate  rather,  at 
the  time  when  they  were  written,  to  the  Dutch  than  to  the 
English,  and  were  strictly  true.  The  English  governor  of 
the  province  long  after  its  transfer,  Governor  Golden,  tells 
us  how  a  chief  complained  to  him  of  the  stiffer  attitude  of 
pride  which  the  English  assumed  towards  the  natives.  He 
said :  "  When  the  Dutch  held  this  country,  we  lay  in  their 
houses ;  but  the  English  have  always  made  us  lie  without 
doors."  Golden  adds:  "It  is  true  that  the  Plantations 
were  first  settled  by  the  meanest  people  of  every  nation, 
and  such  as  had  the  least  sense  of  honor.  The  Dutch  first 
settlers,  many  of  them,  I  may  say,  had  none  of  the  virtues  of 
their  countrymen  except  their  industry  in  getting  money, 
and  they  sacrificed  everything  other  people  think  honor- 
able or  most  sacred,  to  their  gain."  This  also  was  said 
of  the  Dutch,  not  of  the  English,  colonists. 

From  1640  to  1643  the  war  then  raging  between  the 
Dutch  and  the  Indians  threatened  to  become  general 
through  the  colonies.  The  traders  up  the  Hudson  had  de- 
fied all  the  rigid  prohibitions  against  the  selling  arms  to  the 
Indians,  and  the  Mohawks  with  their  confederates  on  the 


344  COLONIAL   RELATIONS  WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

river  nearly  exterminated  the  settlers  at  Manhattan. 
Then  the  massacre  of  the  Indians  by  the  Dutch  at  Pavonia 
and  Corlaer's  Hook  was  attended  by  barbarous  tortures, 
which  rivalled  in  cruelty  and  horror  even  the  savagery  of 
the  natives.  Fearful  devastation  and  terror  followed.  Two 
Indians  were  so  shockingly  tortured  by  the  Dutch  at  Man- 
hattan that  even  some  squaws,  as  they  looked  on,  cried, 
"  Shame  ! "  Captain  Underbill,  leading  the  Dutch,  massacred 
nearly  seven  hundred  Indians  near  Greenwich  and  Stam- 
ford. It  was  estimated  that  sixteen  hundred  savages  were 
killed  in  this  war. 

Three  distinct  and  most  destructive  massacres  and  onsets 
by  the  Indians  are  marked  in  the  early  colonial  history  of 
Virginia.  The  first  settlers  in  their  almost  abortive  efforts, 
renewed  in  spite  of  overwhelming  disasters  and  failures,  to 
obtain  a  foothold  on  the  soil,  had  been  frequently,  we  may 
say  continuously,  indebted  to  the  generosity  of  the  natives 
in  rescuing  them  from  starvation.  In  ungrateful  return 
they  insulted  and  spoiled  their  benefactors.  Stirred  to  self- 
defence  and  revenge  by  a  resolute  chieftain,  —  successor 
and  brother  to  the  so-called  "  Emperor "  Powhatan,  who 
hated  the  encroaching  whites,  —  a  secret  conspiracy  was 
organized  among  them,  long  and  carefully  planned,  without 
knowledge  or  suspicion  by  the  settlers.  On  the  day  agreed 
upon,  in  concert,  the  scattered  dwellings  of  the  colonists 
were  set  upon,  —  March  22,  1622.  Laborers  and  loiterers 
and  whole  families  were  taken  in  the  panic  of  surprise, 
and  in  one  and  the  same  hour  three  hundred  and  fifty 
whites  —  men,  women,  and  children  —  were  slaughtered. 
The  miserable  remnant  took  refuge  within  their  rude  and 
rotting  fort  at  Jamestown,  and  the  wonder  is  that  the 
savages  did  not  follow  up  their  furious  onset  by  starv- 
ing and  extirpating  that  remnant.  Nor  did  the  whites 
learn  wisdom,  caution,  or  humanity  from  this  visitation 
of  vengeance  from  those  whom  they  so  outraged  and  op- 
pressed. 


WARS  IN  VIRGINIA.  345 

When  the  news  of  this  massacre  reached  London,  and  it 
was  brought  there  before  the  Council  of  Virginia,  the  word 
sent  back  to  the  dismayed  wretches  at  Jamestown  was  this : 
"  We  must  advise  you  to  root  out  from  being  any  longer  a 
people  so  cursed,  a  nation  ungrateful  to  all  benefits  and 
uncapable  of  all  goodness," --the  "people"  and  "nation" 
thus  described  being  the  Indian,  not  the  English.  And 
again :  "  Take  a  sharp  revenge  upon  the  bloody  miscreants, 
even  to  the  measure  that  they  intended  against  us, — the 
rooting  them  out  for  being  longer  a  people  on  the  face  of 
the  earth." 

Another  concerted  outburst  of  the  savages  in  Virginia 
took  place  in  1644,  when  nearly  as  many  of  the  whites  as 
in  the  previous  conspiracy  were  numbered  as  victims.  Still 
a  third  similar  combination  of  the  hounded  and  abused  na- 
tives, in  1656,  renewed  the  efforts,  at  any  cost  to  them- 
selves', to  visit  the  utmost  vengeance  upon  their  torment- 
ors. Though  the  whites  in  this  case  had  Indian  allies,  the 
result  rather  aggravated  their  disasters. 

Were  it  worth  the  careful  and  thorough  research  which 
would  be  required  for  a  full  examination  of  all  our  mate- 
rials of  local  and  general  history,  to  pursue  the  details 
of  these  various  conflicts  between  the  whites  and  the  In- 
dians as  they  were  first  enacted  by  the  earlier  bodies  of 
the  colonists  on  the  regions  nearest  to  the  seaboard,  it  is 
believed  that  full  verification  would  be  made  of  the  asser- 
tion, that,  notwithstanding  the  white  man's  superiority  in 
weapons  and  skill,  the  victims  on  his  own  side  in  all  hos- 
tilities far  outnumbered  those  of  the  red  men.  That,  save 
in  the  Quaker  proprietary  province  of  Pennsylvania,  there 
should  not  have  been  a  single  exception,  near  the  close 
of  the  century  so  filled  with  savage  warfare,  to  the 
universal  enactment  of  these  tragic  massacres  between 
the  two  races,  might  offer  another  subject  for  thorough  in- 
vestigation by  an  interested  inquirer.  Were  there  forces 
working  through  natural  antipathies,  through  irreconcil- 


346  COLONIAL   RELATIONS  WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

able  race  instincts,  and  through  the  compulsion  of  circum- 
stances, which  made  this  struggle  inevitable  ?  If  so,  and 
if  this  view  of  the  facts  can  be  philosophically  sustained, 
not  in  vindication  of  wrong,  but  in  explanation  of  expe- 
rience, then  a  lesson  so  signally  assured  as  true  in  the 
past  must  furnish  instruction  and  guidance  for  the  future. 
But  if  all  this  direful  rage  and  havoc  of  human  passion, 
this  goading  purpose  of  mastery  by  the  strong  and  privi- 
leged over  the  weak  and  incompetent,  were  merely  a  huge 
struggle  of  might  against  right,  it  is  simple  trifling  to  re- 
fer it  to  any  principle  rooted  in  the  nature  of  things.  Race 
prejudices  have  had  range  and  opportunity  sufficient  to 
show  their  strength.  Perhaps  the  world  is  wise  and  hu- 
mane enough  now  to  inquire  whether  they  are  just  and 
right,  whether  they  are  to  be  yielded  to  or  discredited. 

During  our  whole  colonial  and  provincial  period  it  was 
the  hard  fate  of  the  Indians,  as  we  have  seen,  to  bear 
the  brunt  of  every  quarrel  between  the  rival  European 
colonists  in  their  jealousies  and  struggles  for  domin- 
ion and  the  profits  of  the  fur-trade.  No  sooner  had  one 
of  the  rivals  conciliated  or  established  friendly  relations 
with  one  or  more  of  the  tribes,  than  the  representatives 
of  the  other  rival  would  seek  to  thwart  any  advantage  of 
their  opponents  by  openly  or  covertly  forming  alliances 
with  other  tribes.  Tribes  which  might  otherwise  have 
lived  in  a  state  of  suspended  animosities  with  each  other 
were  thus  driven  to  take  the  war-path.  So,  too,  it  has  hap- 
pened that  the  whole  or  a  portion  of  a  tribe,  or  of  allied 
tribes,  in  the  course  of  a  century  was  found  in  the  pay  and 
service  of  the  French  against  the  English ;  of  the  English 
against  the  French ;  of  the  Spaniards  against  the  French, 
and  of  the  French  against  the  Spaniards ;  and  then  of  the 
armies  of  Great  Britain  and  our  own  provincial  forces 
against  the  French,  followed  in  a  few  years  by  their  enlist- 
ment by  Great  Britain  to  aid  her  in  crushing  the  rebellion 
of  her  own  colonies. 


CONFEDERATION   OP   COLONIES.  347 

We  have  referred  thus  far  only  to  such  acts  of  warfare 
with  the  savages  during  our  colonial  period  as  were  without 
concert  between  colonists  in  widely  separated  localities, 
each  defending  its  own  plantation  with  its  own  resources 
against  its  own  assailants. 

This  statement,  however,  as  to  the  separate  conduct  of 
hostilities  in  the  early  colonial  period  by  each  distinct  plan- 
tation is  subject  to  qualification  in  the  case  of  the  New  Eng- 
land colonists.  These  came  into  a  confederation  in  1643, 
mainly  with  a  view  to  mutual  protection  and  defence  against 
the  savages.  They  were  to  be  friends  and  allies  in  mili- 
tary operations,  and  to  recognize  their  enemies  as  common. 
Though  this  confederation  had  not  been  formed  at  the  time 
of  the  Pequot  war,  as  the  component  parties  to  it  were  not 
all  then  in  being,  there  was  an  anticipation  of  its  objects 
so  far  as  the  case  admitted.  Soldiers  from  Massachusetts, 
Plymouth,  and  Rhode  Island,  with  Narragansett  and  Mohi- 
can allies,  composed  the  army  of  invasion  and  destruction. 
When  the  colonies  of  Massachusetts,  "Plymouth,  New  Ha- 
ven, and  Connecticut  came  into  confederacy,  a  jealousy 
and  dislike  of  some  of  the  characteristic  principles  of  Rhode 
Island  led  to  its  exclusion,  though  it  had  liberty  to  come 
in  as  if  really  a  part  of  Plymouth  colony.  In  King  Philip's 
war  the  confederacy  proved  to  be  very  effective,  though 
there  were  jars  and  much  friction  in  its  elements  and  in  its 
executive  workings.  So  this  great  conspiracy  of  the  natives 
was  met,  as  were  the  oppressive  measures  of  the  mother 
country  just  a  century  afterwards,  by  the  union  of  confede- 
rated colonial  forces.  Gradually,  as  the  drama  advanced 
over  the  stage  of  the  continent,  not  only  did  all  the  colonial 
governments  find  themselves  drawn  into  more  or  less  of 
combined  hostility  against  the  natives,  but  England  came 
into  the  strife  with  fleets  and  armies. 

The  rivalry  between  the  English  and  the  French  colo- 
nists, which  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  had  been  fo- 
menting here,  —  varied  by  broils,  intrigues,  local  conflicts, 


348  COLONIAL  RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

and  bloody  struggles  in  the  wilderness  and  on  the  frontiers, 
with  naval  encounters,  sieges,  and  changing  success  and 
failure,  with  occasional  pauses  by  truce  and  diplomacy,  — 
was  substantially  brought  to  a  decision  by  what  we  call 
emphatically  the  French  and  Indian  War.  The  final  strug- 
gle was  protracted  for  seven  years,  the  period  closing  a 
little  more  than  a  decade  before  the  opening  of  our  Revolu- 
tionary War.  By  the  Peace  of  Paris,  in  1763,  France  ceded 
to  Great  Britain  all  her  territory  here  lying  east  of  the 
Mississippi ;  retaining  Louisiana,  as  then  so  defined,  which, 
however,  by  a  secret  treaty  she  ceded  at  the  time  to  Spain, 
to  be  regained  afterwards  by  France,  and  then  sold  to  our 
Government.  While  France  was  still  maintaining  her  hold 
upon  Canada  and  the  Ohio  Valley,  she  had  won  to  her 
side  the  Western  Indian  tribes,  and  had  even  to  some  de- 
gree conciliated  her  old-time  relentless  foes,  the  Iroquois 
of  New  York.  But  from  the  first  tokens  of  the  crippling 
and  failing  of  the  sway  of  France,  her  Indian  allies  began 
to  manifest  their  inconstancy  and  fickleness  and  their  mer- 
cenary spirit  by  trimming  for  English  friendships.  The 
English  had  already  encroached  upon  the  fur-trade  ;  and 
though  their  enterprise  of  this  sort  had  been  perilous,  it 
had  proved  profitable  enough  to  prompt  extension.  Eng- 
land, as  has  been  observed  on  a  previous  page,  had  now  an 
opportunity  which  she  wasted  or  trifled  with,  so  as  to  turn 
against  her  the  fiercest  and  most  disastrous  and  the  most 
concentrated  struggle  against  their  destiny  which  the  Indian 
tribes  had  ever  been  goaded  into  making  since  their  first 
collision  with  the  white  man.  The  effect  in  the  diplomacy 
of  the  courts  of  the  cession  by  France  to  Britain  of  Canada 
and  the  Ohio  Valley  was  to  transfer  all  the  Indian  tribes 
of  those  vast  regions  to  British  sway.  The  Indians  became 
as  much  subjects  of  the  British  Crown  as  were  the  white 
colonists.  They  had  no  part  in  this  treaty  transfer,  what- 
ever might  have  been  their  part  in  the  war  which  was 
closed  by  it.  They  had  no  idea  of  being  thus  made  over, 


ENGLISH   ACCESSION  TO   THE  TERRITORY.  349 

with  their  territory,  by  one  foreign  power  to  another,  both 
being  alike  intruders  and  interlopers.  England  did  indeed, 
after  the  treaty,  by  proclamation,  reserve  the  Ohio  Valley 
and  the  neighboring  region  for  the  Indians,  and  forbade 
the  whites  to  intrude  for  settlement  upon  it.  But  the  In- 
dians had  not  at  the  time  the  knowledge  of  this  royal  pro- 
vision for  them  ;  and  in  fact  it  was  made  too  late,  for  the 
mischief  which  it  was  intended  to  avert  had  been  already 
done.  That  country  had  been  penetrated  by  English  traders, 
who  coursed  over  portions  of  it  with  their  trains  of  pack- 
horses.  More  than  this :  daring  and  enterprising  men, 
with  or  without  their  families,  had  cleared  and  occupied 
many  settlements  or  isolated  homes  scattered  over  its  at- 
tractive spaces.  Wofully  did  they  have  to  meet,  in  addition 
to  the  toils  and  buffetings  of  their  pioneer  life,  the  ven- 
geance of  their  exasperated  savage  foes. 

The  first  move  of  the  regulars  of  the  Crown  with  pro- 
vincial troops  was  to  take  possession  of  the  forts  and 
strongholds  ceded  with  the  French  dominion,  to  change 
their  garrisons,  and  to  substitute  the  British  flag  for  that 
of  France.  These  strongholds  were  sadly  battered  and 
decayed.  The  French  had  cajoled  the  ever-jealous  savages 
to  wink  at  their  establishment,  as  trading-posts  and  mission 
stations,  on  the  pretence  that  they  would  be  a  security  to 
the  favored  tribes  against  their  foes.  The  British  forces 
at  the  time  were  much  reduced ;  only  skeletons  of  regi- 
ments left  here  and  others  weakened  by  service  in  the 
West  Indies  being  available,  as  the  body  of  the  troops  had 
been  disbanded  and  sent  home  at  the  peace.  It  was  under 
these  circumstances  and  with  such  means  that  the  lake  and 
valley  posts  passing  from  the  sway  of  France  were  to  be 
occupied  by  the  English  at  a  cost  not  foreseen. 

In  reading  from  original  and  authentic  sources  the  let- 
ters, journals,  and  narratives  relating  to  the  French  and 
Indian  wars  and  to  our  own  immediately  subsequent  con- 
flicts under  Great  Britain  with  the  infuriated  savages,  we 


350  COLONIAL  RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

are  profoundly  impressed  by  the  prowess,  heroism,  outlay 
of  arduous  effort  and  exhaustive  toil  by  the  English  and 
provincial  forces.  Their  work  was  in  gloomy  and  almost 
impenetrable  forests,  often  pathless  and  treacherous,  beset 
by  ambushed  foes,  whose  stealthy  tread  was  as  noiseless 
as  their  fiendish  shrieks  and  yellings  were  appalling,  when 
they  broke  from  the  woods  with  tomahawk  and  scalping- 
knife  upon  their  wretched  victims.  The  policy  of  all  the 
European  colonists  —  whether  their  main  object  was  the 
occupation  of  interior  territory  in  their  rivalry  for  posses- 
sion, or  to  secure  a  centre  of  trade  with  the  Indians  —  was 
to  push  forward  armed  parties,  with  supplies,  to  seize  stra- 
tegic posts  for  strongholds.  These  were  advanced  beyond 
the  actual  settlements,  and  were  planted  at  the  forks  or 
near  the  sources  of  rivers,  at  portages,  and  on  favoring  sites 
on  the  shores  of  lakes.  These  forts  were  defended  and 
protected  as  well  as  circumstances  would  permit.  They 
would  have  been  but  as  houses  of  cards  in  the  warfare  of 
civilized  men ;  but  they  were  of  service  against  the  simple 
tactics  of  the  savage.  A  blockhouse  of  solid  timber,  with 
rude  barracks,  a  magazine,  a  well,  the  whole  surrounded 
by  a  high  stockade  with  loopholes,  —  such  was  the  wilder- 
ness fort.  They  were  designed  to  admit  of  communication 
with  each  other,  and  so  with  the  centres  of  civilization, 
whence  from  time  to  time  supplies  and  reinforcements  for 
their  garrisons  might  be  brought  to  them.  Often  when 
there  were  any  outlying  and  scattered  settlements  near 
these  defended  posts,  the  dismayed  and  perilled  frontier 
families,  or  fugitives  escaping  from  a  massacre,  would  flee 
to  them  for  a  refuge.  When  the  savages  in  their  rage  and 
rapacity  were  lurking  around  one  of  these  exposed  forts, 
or  daringly  besieging  it  with  their  crafty  demand  for  a  par- 
ley, or  their  mocking  taunts  and  hideous  bellowings,  they 
racked  their  barbarous  ingenuity  for  means  for  outwitting 
the  hated  white  man.  Night  and  day  the  slender  garrison, 
often  weak  from  scant  fare  and  exhausted  by  sleeplessness, 


FOREST   STRONGHOLDS   AND   GARRISONS.  351 

would  need  to  watch  every  moment  lest  an  arrow,  winged 
with  flaming  tow,  should  fire  their  combustible  defences, 
or  they  should  expose  head  or  limb  to  foes  armed  now  with 
the  white  man's  weapons  as  well  as  their  own,  and  skilled 
already  in  some  of  the  arts  and  guile  of  their  enemies. 

The  courage  of  the  garrison  was  nerved  in  every  fibre 
and  muscle  to  hold  the  fort ;  bearing  almost  inconceivable 
drafts  upon  their  fortitude  and  endurance,  because  they 
well  knew  what  horrors  and  torments  would  attend  their 
fate  if  they  faltered  and  were  vanquished.  We  read  with 
creepings  of  our  flesh,  and  as  if  we  were  having  part  in 
the  long-drawn  agony,  the  literally  faithful  reports  from 
these  forest  strongholds.  As  when  we  witness  the  mar- 
vellous feats  of  acrobats  and  jugglers,  or  listen  to  the 
strains  of  some  gifted  musician,  or  admire  the  genius  of 
an  artist  in  some  consummate  work,  we  are  led  to  marvel 
at  the  manifold  and  latent  capacities  and  aptitudes  of  our 
common  human  nature  in  its  play  and  in  its  finer  endow- 
ments,—  so,  when  we  are  made  to  realize  what  men  have 
dared  and  done,  what  they  have  effected  and  endured,  and 
how  they  have  existed  and  also  found  the  zest  of  a 
strange  joy  through  perils  and  woes,  even  the  relation  of 
which  we  cannot  bear,  then  also  are  we  reminded  of 
what  there  is  of  latent  power  and  ability  in  men.  One 
grows  distasteful  of  sentimental  romance  and  the  crea- 
tions of  fiction  who  has  informed  himself  of  such  real 
things  in  man's  exposures  and  ventures  and  endurings.  It 
seems  heartless  to  play  with  such  stern  experiences  as  if 
fancy  or  rhythm  could  either  soften  or  heighten  them. 

In  keeping  up  communication  between  these  forest  gar- 
risons with  each  other  and  with  their  base,  it  was  always 
necessary  —  and  the  emergency  was  greatest  when  the 
peril  or  disaster  was  most  threatening  and  dire  —  to  send 
expresses  through  the  haunted  wilderness.  Whenever  the 
straits  or  the  baffled  wits  or  the  deliberate  judgment  of 
the  officer  in  command  decided  that  a  scout  or  messenger 


352  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

must  be  sent  forth  on  that  stern  errand,  he  had  a  right 
to  name  his  man.  He  knew  whom  to  select ;  and  very 
rarely  —  I  know  not  if  in  any  case  —  did  the  order  find 
the  man  to  refuse  or  to  quail.  To  creep  through  the  gate 
in  the  darkness ;  to  track  his  way  by  night  through  for- 
est, swamp,  and  watercourse,  with  snow-shoes  or  mocca- 
sons  torn  by  the  tangling  briars  or  soaked  with  the  ooze 
of  the  woods  and  marshes,  listening  to  the  music  of 
howling  wolves  and  hooting  owls,  as  sweet  compared  with 
the  shriek  and  yell  of  the  red  man ;  to  find  a  covert  by 
day,  and  so  —  alone,  famished,  fireless,  and  pinched  by 
the  cold  to  his  very  marrow  —  to  alternate  by  light  and 
darkness,  still  undismayed,  till  his  errand  was  sped  or 
dismally  baffled; — this  was  his  work  and  its  conditions. 
Amazement  comes  over  us  when  we  know  how  often  this 
venture  of  heroism  succeeded.  We  willingly  leave  un- 
veiled in  tragic  gloom  the  cases  in  which  message  and 
messenger  were  often  shrouded. 

What  herculean  toil,  what  a  strain  upon  all  human  re- 
sources of  vigor  and  endurance,  were  exacted  in  the  plant- 
ing and  supply  of  a  wilderness  stronghold !  The  pack- 
horse  was  comparatively  a  deferred  help  in  this  work. 
Human  hands  and  backs  and  shoulders  did  the  earliest, 
the  hardest,  and  the  worst  of  it.  If  the  convoy  needed 
something  broader  than  the  Indian  trail  (the  forest  path- 
way) for  a  train  in  Indian  file,  then  a  military  road  was 
to  be  opened,  the  fallen  trees  making  a  lurking-place  for 
skulking  Indians,  while  the  stumps  and  rocks  impeded 
the  lumbering  wagons,  with  their  cannon  and  flour-bags 
and  meat-barrels.  Cattle,  too,  were  to  be  moved  over 
those  pastureless  highways.  When  the  English,  after  the 
cession  of  Canada,  went  with  their  scant  forces  and  the 
help  of  provincials  and  occasionally  some  friendly  Indian 
allies  to  take  possession  of  the  farther  forts  on  the  lakes, 
the  enterprise  was  thick  with  the  perils  of  sea  and  shore. 
On  the  route  from  the  seaboard,  whence  artillery,  muni- 


SIEGES   IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  353 

tions,  and  all  heavy  supplies  were  to  be  received,  lay  the  car- 
rying-place around  the  Falls  of  Niagara,  —  the  most  rough 
and  dangerous  of  all  portages,  in  which  was  the  trap  well 
called  "  the  Devil's  Hole."  While  all  supplies  had  to  be 
carried  in  hand  or  on  packs  over  this  interval  of  preci- 
pices and  maddened  waters,  the  batteaux  and  the  armed 
vessels  for  the  lakes  had  to  be  constructed  above  it  to 
receive  the  freight. 

It  is  to  this  harrowing  period  of  our  colonial  warfare 
with  the  savages,  after  the  conquest  of  Canada  and  before 
our  Revolutionary  struggle,  that  Mr.  Parkman  devotes  his 
marvellously  skilful  pen,  in  his  "Conspiracy  of  Pontiac." 
Though  the  theme  of  this  work,  wrought  with  such  graphic 
power  in  its  absorbing  interest,  properly  closes  the  history 
of  New  France,  in  his  series  of  volumes  it  was  the  first  to 
be  given  to  the  public ;  and  the  author  has  since,  in  succes- 
sive publications,  been  dealing  with  the  periods  and  inci- 
dents preceding  it.  It  was  this,  his  first  historical  publica- 
tion, that  engaged  for  the  author  the  highest  appreciation 
of  his  readers,  as  one  who  had  been  long  looked  and  waited 
for  as  competent,  gifted,  and  inclined  to  give  to  the  most 
characteristic  and  thrilling  themes  and  scenes  of  our  his- 
tory a  treatment  worthy  of  their  grand  materials  and  actors. 
The  wilderness  opens  its  depths,  its  grandeur,  its  solitudes, 
and  all  its  phenomena  of  scenery  and  adventure  to  his  eye 
and  thought,  to  his  rare  genius  of  description  and  inter- 
pretation. His  delineation  of  the  "Indian  Summer"  at 
Detroit  is  more  a  painting  than  a  piece  of  writing.  His  por- 
traiture of  the  savage  on  the  war-path  —  in  his  fierceness 
and  rage,  in  his  weapons  of  hand  and  passion,  in  his  weak 
as  well  as  his  strong  qualities,  in  his  inconstancy  as  in  his 
resolve  —  is  the  most  faithful  that  has  ever  been  drawn  in 
all  literature.  His  relation  of  sieges,  ambushes,  stratagems, 
and  fights,  his  details  of  the  vigils  of  the  imperilled  in  gar- 
risons and  in  lonely  cabins,  and  of  the  desolations  and  woes 
of  victims  amid  scenes  of  horror,  are  relieved  of  actual  tor- 


354  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH    THE   INDIANS. 

ture  for  the  reader  only  by  the  arrest  of  the  pen  when  to  be 
told  more  would  be  unendurable. 

How  far  the  Indian  tribes  with  which  in  our  turn  we 
have  to  deal  are  to  be  regarded  in  blood  and  lineage,  in 
descent  or  affiliation,  as  representatives  of  those  with  whom 
the  European  colonists  came  into  these  protracted  conflicts, 
may  be  an  intricate  question  for  examination.  There  has 
been  a  series  of  such  conflicts  on  successive  strips  or  re- 
gions of  the  continent,  and  corresponding  changes  in  the 
names  of  the  tribes  encountered  and  vanquished.  The  In- 
dians with  whom  the  first  colonists  came  into  collision  may 
all  be  supposed  to  have  seen  the  salt  water,  as  living  near 
the  seaboard  where  they  met  the  invaders.  Their  names 
have  dropped  from  speech  and  their  tribes  are  regarded  as 
extinct,  whether  because  they  have  wholly  perished,  or  be- 
cause what  remnants  of  them  remain  in  descent  have  been 
adopted  or  merged  in  other  tribes.  At  all  events  we  hear 
nothing  nowadays  of  Pequots,  Mohicans,  Narragansetts, 
Pamankeys.  In  the  second  century  of  the  colonies  such 
familiar  names  as  the  Hurons,  the  Mohawks,  the  Dela- 
wares,  the  Shawanoes,  and  the  Miamis,  with  the  Ottawas 
and  the  Ojibways,  engross  our  attention.  Now  with  each 
new  year  of  Western  enterprise  some  of  the  old  names  of 
tribes  drop  out  of  use,  and  new  ones  appear  in  Government 
records  and  in  the  papers,  as  the  Arapahoes,  the  Coman- 
ches,  the  Apaches,  the  Snakes,  the  Blackfeet.  Whether 
these  tribes  last  made  known  to  us  are  affiliated  with  those 
of  our  earliest  acquaintance,  or  have  been  disclosed  to  us 
as  reserved  and  original  sections  of  the  same  old  race  of 
red  men,  independent  in  lineage  and  position,  certain  it  is 
that  they  are  the  same  sort  of  men  in  all  their  marked 
characteristics,  —  in  nature,  habits,  traits,  ways  of  life, 
method  of  warfare,  jealousy  and  hatred  of  the  whites,  and 
steadfast  dislike  of  civilization.  The  exceptions  to  this 
statement  are  few  and  quite  recent.  The  savages  roam- 
ing near  the  passes  and  plains  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 


TRADITIONS   OP   INDIAN   BARBARITIES.  355 

are  identical  in  barbarousness  with  those  once  near  our 
seaboard,  and  those  once  on  the  borders  of  the  Great 
Lakes  and  in  the  Ohio  Valley.  The  red  race  is  unchanged 
in  its  specimen  examples  and  in  its  staple,  save  as  to  the 
adoption  by  some  of  them  of  the  white  man's  weapons 
and  goods.  In  the  mean  time  the  characteristics,  the 
habits,  the  feelings  and  sentiments  of  the  white  race  have 
been  modified  even  as  regards  the  attitude  assumed  to- 
wards the  Indians.  No  body  of  the  whites  now,  holding 
relatively  the  same  social  and  moral  position  as  the  stock 
of  our  first  colonists,  would  maintain  that  the  Indians 
are  to  be  exterminated  or  denied  the  rights  of  humanity 
because  they  are  heathens  or  because  they  are  savages. 
Their  claim  to  territory  arid  to  generous  treatment  is 
more  frankly  and  emphatically  recognized  to-day  than  ever 
before ;  and  this  because  of  the  white  man's  advance  in 
humanity. 

It  is  noticeable  that  the  spirit  of  humane  philanthropy, 
of  leniency  and  sympathy  as  regards,  the  Indians  and  their 
treatment,  has  been  and  is  to-day  exceedingly  variable,  not 
so  much  among  classes  of  our  people  as  in  the  places  where 
they  happen  to  live.  The  farther  any  community  is  in 
space,  or  in  the  dates  of  its  history,  from  actual  experience 
of  Indian  conflicts,  the  more  kindly  will  the  people  in  it  be 
towards  the  savages  in  general ;  commiserating  them,  and 
advising  their  patient  and  forbearing  treatment.  Scarce 
one  single  loud  breathing  of  pity  or  sympathy  would  have 
been  indulged  in  our  own  neighborhood  two  hundred  or 
more  than  one  hundred  years  ago.  Those  whose  eyes  had 
beheld,  or  whose  household  memories  and  fresh  traditions 
kept  alive,  the  scenes  of  devastation,  burning,  and  butchery 
in  the  New  England  settlements  in  King  Philip's  war  would 
with  scarce  an  exception  have  avowed,  that  absolute  ex- 
tinction, without  mercy  in  the  method,  was  the  necessary 
and  the  rightful  doom  of  the  savage.  Much  the  same, 
scarcely  softened,  would  have  been  the  judgment  of  our 


356  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

soldiers  and  their  families,  and  of  communities  living  but 
little  more  than  a  score  of  miles  from  Boston,  when  the 
Indians  goaded  and  led  on  by  their  Jesuit  priests  and  the 
French  from  Canada  brought  devastation  and  massacre 
on  so  many  of  our  frontier  settlements. 

The  wounds  of  those  days  of  agony  and  torture  are 
healed.  The  dismay  and  exasperation,  the  rage  and  deep- 
ly implanted  hate  which  fired  them  have  cooled.  The  In- 
dian has  passed  from  our  sight  and  range.  We  know  him 
only  in  story,  or  as  our  daily  papers  tell  us  of  distant  en- 
counters with  wasting  tribes,  and  puzzle  us  with  confused 
pleadings  and  reproaches  as  to  the  right  and  wrong  of 
each  fresh  outburst.  He  would  have  been  a  hero  in  nerve, 
and  a  saint  or  a  fool  in  spirit  or  judgment,  who  a  little 
more  than  a  hundred  years  ago  had  advocated  the  peace 
policy  amid  the  border  settlements  of  Pennsylvania  and 
Virginia,  when,  goaded  by  the  master-purpose  and  plan 
of  Pontiac,  the  region  between  the  Alleghanies  and  the 
Ohio  Valley  was  the  scene  of  the  most  dire  carnage,  deso- 
lation, and  horror ;  when  a  thousand  scattered  households 
were  destroyed  with  all  the  atrocities  of  savage  warfare, 
and  two  thousand  men,  women,  and  children  suffered  all 
the  ingenuities  of  mutilation  and  torture.  It  does  not 
surprise  us  to  read  that  even  the  peace  policy  of  the 
Friends,  under  which  they  had  lived  for  more  than  sixty 
years  generally  so  amicably  with  the  Indians,  should  have 
yielded  —  some  think  ludicrously,  others  think  contemp- 
tibly— under  the  strain  and  agony  of  that  bitter  crisis 
for  humanity.  In  its  earlier  stages  that  frontier  havoc 
by  the  infuriated  league  of  savages  hardly  disturbed  the 
tranquillity  of  the  thrifty  Quakers  in  Philadelphia.  It  was 
charged  that  their  pity  and  sympathy  for  the  Indians 
exceeded  their  regard  for  the  scattered  settlers  on  their 
frontiers,  principally  Scotch-Irish  Presbyterians,  who  had 
all  become  victims  or  fugitives.  The  Friends,  too,  had  a 
controlling  influence  in  their  provincial  Assembly.  When, 


THE   QUAKERS   IN  THE   WAR.  357 

after  imploring  appeals  and  impassioned  remonstrances, 
they  were  induced  to  vote  a  sum  of  money  as  a  supply  for 
the  defence  of  the  province,  they  prudently  called  it  a  gift 
for  the  service  of  the  King.  But  the  time  came,  with  the 
straits  of  dire  necessity,  when  those  Philadelphia  Quakers 
were  found  armed  and  drilled,  with  all  the  stern  para- 
phernalia of  fight  and  battle,  with  cannon  planted  in  their 
barricaded  streets.  And  that  battle  array  was  forced  upon 
them,  not  for  an  encounter  with  actual  Indians  invading 
their  city,  but  to  ward  off  a  troop  of  well-nigh  maddened 
rustics, — the  Paxton  Boys,  —  the  survivors  and  champions 
of  their  murdered  neighbors,  who  came  to  insist  that  the 
peace  policy  should  no  longer  trifle  with  the  dire  emer- 
gency. Hardly,  under  the  circumstances,  are  we  staggered 
at  reading  the  tariff  of  bounties  already  mentioned,  which 
the  governor,  grandson  of  William  Penn,  offered  by  proc- 
lamation,—  as,  for  a  male  Indian  prisoner,  above  ten  years 
old,  one  hundred  and  fifty  Spanish  dollars ;  for  a  female, 
one  hundred  and  thirty  dollars  ;  for  the  scalp  of  such  a 
male,  one  hundred  and  thirty-four  dollars,- — of  a  female, 
fifty  dollars.  The  Assembly  voted  to  send  three  hundred 
men  to  aid  in  protecting  the  frontiers ;  and  by  the  earnest 
request  of  Colonel  Bouquet,  as  he  informed  General  Am- 
herst,  the  commissioners  agreed  to  send  to  England  for 
fifty  couples  of  bloodhounds  to  be  used  by  the  Rangers 
on  horseback  against  Indian-scalping  parties.  It  was  re- 
markable that  the  accumulation  of  all  that  is  harrowing 
and  desolating  in  the  methods  and  atrocities  of  Indian 
warfare  should  have  been  visited  upon  the  province  which 
in  the  purpose  and  policy  of  its  proprietary  founder  was 
expressly  and  solemnly  pledged  to  just  and  amicable  re- 
lations with  the  savages.  It  is  but  right,  therefore,  to 
make  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  Quakers  had  no 
initiative  agency  in  these  hostilities,  and  did  their  utmost, 
even  to  what  seemed  an  indulgence  in  supineness,  apathy, 
and  indifference  to  the  calamities  visited  upon  the  white 


358  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH    THE   INDIANS. 

settlers  on  their  bounds,  to  restrain  the  visiting  of  any 
vengeance  upon  the  savages.  The  principal  sufferers  on 
the  outskirts  of  the  province  were  not  Quakers,  but,  as  we 
have  noticed,  Scotch-Irish  Presbyterians.  Though  these 
venturesome  pioneers  themselves  provoked  the  hate  of  the 
savages,  they  suffered  as  common  victims  of  the  great  con- 
spiracy of  the  tribes. 

An  important  word,  which  we  meet  more  frequently  than 
any  other  in  every  historic  reference  to  our  Indian  relations, 
is  that  word  "  Frontiers."  It  is  used  to  define  a  supposed 
and  somewhat  imaginary  boundary  line  between  the  fixed 
white  settlements  and  territory  vacant  or  still  occupied  by 
the  Indians.  That  boundary  line  has  always  been,  as  it  is 
now,  a  very  ragged  and  unstable  one.  It  has  proved  to  be 
like  the  horizon,  when  one  is  walking  towards  it;  it  has 
never  been  a  real  barrier,  but  always  movable,  and  always 
a  line  of  strife  and  conflict.  It  has  been  shifting  between 
every  mountain  range  and  every  broad  river  between  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  Lake  of  the  Woods,  till  it  has  be- 
come self-obliterated,  and  no  longer  a  significant  word. 
Our  frontiers,  which  that  boundary  line  was  supposed  to 
limit,  have  become  merged  and  blurred  on  the  whole  of  this 
side  of  our  continent,  and  have  begun  to  advance  inwards 
from  the  Pacific  coast. 

Less  than  three  hundred  years  ago,  there  was  not  that 
number  of  Europeans  on  our  broad  domain:  there  are 
now  more  than  forty  millions  of  that  stock  here.  In  the 
development  reaching  to  that  result,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  say  where,  for  the  space  of  even  a  single  year,  the  fron- 
tiers of  the  white  man  have  rested.  The  present  domain 
of  the  United  States  may  be  set  before  our  view,  under 
joint  European  discovery  and  occupancy,  as  parted  in  three 
longitudinal  strips  dividing  the  continent  to  three  great 
nationalities.  Thus  to  Spain  would  be  assigned  the  Pacific 
coast,  advancing  towards  the  Rocky  Mountains ;  to  France, 
the  middle  strip,  from  those  Mountains  to  the  Alleghaiiies ; 


THE   SHIFTING   FRONTIERS.  359 

and  to  Great  Britain,  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  As  we  fol- 
low out  in  the  records  and  romances  of  our  history  the 
steady  advance  of  exploration  and  settlement  under  crown 
and  proprietary  grants,  opening  the  inner  recesses  of  our 
continent,  we  trace  the  workings  of  two  great  branches  of 
enterprise,  —  the  one,  combined  and  public,  associated  and 
aided  by  royalty  and  patronage ;  the  other,  guided  wholly 
by  individual  energy  and  resources.  The  rival  efforts  and 
conflicting  claims  of  European  sovereignties  have  set  the 
great  stake  on  trial  by  the  ordeal  of  battle  between  white 
men.  The  ardor  and  heroism  of  individual  pioneer  advent- 
urers have  pushed  beyond  the  ventures  of  any  associated 
enterprise,  and,  with  a  persistency  of  purpose  which  has 
seemed  almost  like  the  goading  of  fate,  have  resolved  that 
this  magnificent  domain  should  no  longer  serve  for  the 
tramping  covert  of  roaming  and  yelping  savages,  but  should 
yield  itself  to  the  uses  of  civilized  man.  Hard  would  it 
have  been  for  the  aborigines,  at  any  time  since  their  first 
sight  of  Europeans,  to  have  said  where  the  frontier  boun- 
dary line  was  to  be  drawn. 

Yet  none  the  less  has  there  been  here  always  a  line, 
however  unstable  and  shifting,  which  may  be  said  to  have 
marked  the  frontiers  of  the  white  settlement.  Deeply  and 
distinctly,  ineffaceably  forever,  has  that  line  been  drawn  at 
different  times,  in  the  records  of  heroism  and  tragedy,  in 
deeds  and  tales  of  courage,  daring,  barbarity,  and  agony.  I 
think  I  speak  within  the  bounds  of  sober  truth,  when  I  say 
that  there  is  not  anywhere  on  this  continent  an  area  of 
twenty  square  miles  that  has  not  witnessed  a  death  strug- 
gle between  the  white  and  the  red  men,  not  merely  as  indi- 
viduals, but  in  bands.  Never  was  a  people  so  concerned, 
as  within  the  last  half  century  our  own  people  have  be- 
come, in  searching  out  the  local  history  and  tracing  the 
human  associations  of  every  spot  of  our  settled  territory. 
Indeed,  we  are  overlaying  our  history  with  piles  and  mas- 
ses of  literature  which  no  one  lifetime  can  ever  master. 


860  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH    THE   INDIANS. 

And  the  records  or  traditions  of  every  town  and  village 
narration  begin  with  an  Indian  story.  We  might  expect 
it  would  be  so  as  regards  our  seaboard,  but  it  is  equally 
and  even  emphatically  the  same  with  the  youngest  settle- 
ment of  the  West.  If  there  might  be  judicious  digests  of 
personal  experience  and  adventure  in  our  successive  fron- 
tiers, with  the  fresh  coloring  of  real  nature  and  actual  life, 
without  any  heightening  from  romance,  what  stores  of 
exciting  and  thrilling  literature  in  biography  and  ballad 
would  be  provided  for  our  young  readers  in  the  coming 
generations !  When  there  are  no  longer  here,  any  virgin 
soil,  nor  pathless  forests,  nor  lurking  beasts,  nor  rivers 
unbridged,  undammed,  reposing  with  their  lakes  in  wild 
solitudes ;  when  cities  and  villages,  manufactories  and 
railways,  fast  dwellings  and  secure  highways,  stretch  from 
ocean  to  ocean,  —  how  breezy  and  rejuvenating  will  be  the 
gathered  lore  of  our  early  days  of  pioneers  and  adventurers, 
of  white  men  who  became  Indians,  of  hardy  and  self-reliant 
solitary  explorers  and  trappers,  who  trod  only  on  grass  and 
leaves,  lived  on  their  surroundings,  drank  from  the  stream, 
slept  under  the  stars,  and  were  ready  at  any  moment  for 
the  yelling  savage  and  his  tomahawk ! 

We  are  to  remember  that,  with  the  single  exception  of 
the  English  Puritan  colonists,  the  first  Europeans  to  come 
here  were  for  a  considerable  time  only  men,  without  wo- 
men, and  to  a  man  adventurers,  daring,  self-reliant,  full 
of  nerve  and  vigor,  —  often,  too,  reckless.  It  was  not  in 
the  nature  of  such  men  to  remain  still  anywhere.  They  did 
not  love  any  kind  of  industrious,  quiet  occupation  any  bet- 
ter than  did  the  Indians.  Tillage  and  handicrafts  were  an 
abomination  to  most  of  them  ;  they  meant  that  the  soil, 
the  waters,  and  the  woods  should  yield  them  free  suste- 
nance. The  large  mass  of  them  deliberately  cast  them- 
selves upon  the  Indian  supplies,  meagre  as  these  often  were. 
But  as  the  stream  of  colonization  swelled,  the  necessity 
of  labor  for  life  became  a  stern  one.  Then  single  settlers, 


MILITARY  EOADS  AND   ARMY   POSTS.  361 

groups,  or  families  began  to  trace  the  rivers  inland  to  their 
sources,  in  search  of  fertile  meadows  and  bottom  lands, 
and  game  and  peltry.  From  that  time  we  began  to  have 
frontiers,  and  we  have  had  them  ever  since.  We  may 
draw  their  lines  as  they  advanced  from  year  to  year,  by 
our  river  courses,  and  our  mountain  ranges  and  rich  val- 
leys. The  Alleghanies  seemed  for  a  brief  time  as  if  they 
would  be  a  permanent  barrier  to  the  English,  especially  as 
on  the  other  side  the  Indians  were  already  armed  by  the 
French  and  allied  with  them.  If  the  genius  of  Walter 
Scott  has  invested  with  a  romantic  glow  the  raids  of  cattle- 
lifters  and  freebooters  on  the  Scottish  borders,  as  the  High- 
landers rushed  from  their  glens  to  plunder  the  Lowlanders, 
what  may  not  the  pens  of  ready  writers  for  all  time  to 
come  do  with  a  region  like  that  which  we  first  called  the 
West,  with  its  tales  of  prowess  and  heroism,  of  lonely  set- 
tlers and  sparse  garrisons,  and  of  fierce  struggles  in  which 
every  creek  and  meadow  and  hill-top  was  the  prize  at  stake 
between  red  men  and  white  men !  The  field  for  our  story- 
tellers and  romancers  and  poets  is  indeed  a  rich  one. 
Cooper's  tales  and  Campbell's  "  Gertrude  of  Wyoming " 
have  hardly  trenched  upon  its  mines. 

When  enterprise,  courage,  and  victory  had  secured  the 
line  at  the  foot  of  the  Alleghanies,  single  pioneers  had 
already  advanced  the  line,  and  lonely  settlers  were  carry- 
ing the  frontier  onwards.  It  crossed  the  territory  of  our 
Middle  States ;  then  Mississippi,  Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Mis- 
souri, and  Iowa,  Kansas,  Dakota,  and  the  Plains,  reaching 
the  foot  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  ;  and  then  the  restless 
and  adventurous  white  man  traversed  the  whole  land  course 
to  meet  from  the  Pacific  coast  the  traffickers  who  had  gone 
round  by  sea  to  exchange  cargoes  on  the  Columbia. 

Stockade  forts,  army  posts,  sylvan  camps,  military  roads, 
emigrant  trains,  and  mail  stations  have  year  by  year  marked 
the  advances  of  this  frontier  line.  There  is  hardly  a  more 
interesting  and  suggestive  theme  than  that  caught  either 


362  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH    THE   INDIANS. 

by  a  glance  of  the  eye  or  by  the  close  study  of  the  mind 
over  a  full  series  of  maps  found  in  the  journals  of  explorers 
or  in  our  voluminous  Government  archives,  illustrating  the 
westward  progress  of  our  race  and  power  on  this  continent. 
Along  the  courses  and  at  the  forks  of  all  our  great  rivers, 
at  their  mouths  and  at  their  sources,  on  lake  and  creek, 
we  find  dotted  the  successive  posts  occupied  for  defence, 
for  refuge,  or  for  supplies.  They  are  simply  stages, — 
hardly  so  stable  as  that :  they  are  scarcely  more  than  the 
footmarks,  the  tread  from  step  to  step,  of  the  restless  white 
man.  And  the  names  which  these  earthen  burrows  or 
palisaded  defences  bear  on  the  maps  (for  they  are  in 
many  cases  passing  into  oblivion)  are  the  head-lines  or 
titles  of  so  many  stories,  —  the  names  of  military  heroes, 
or  hapless  victims,  or  tragic  scenes  of  endurance  or  mas- 
sacre. It  is  hardly  strange  that  our  Western  countrymen 
should  be  open  to  the  charge  from  our  mother  land  of 
having  corrupted,  or  barbarized,  or  vulgarized  the  English 
language.  Our  Western  explorers  and  adventurers  have 
had  occasion  for  words  or  vocables  not  found  in  the  dic- 
tionaries, and  they  have  not  hesitated  to  invent  them,  or  to 
let  Nature  do  it  for  them.  Our  Government  has  under 
preparation  an  authentic  and  elaborate  map,  which  is  care- 
fully to  mark  the  original  native  names  for  the  whole  con- 
tinent, and  to  note  the  successive  nomenclature  of  red  and 
white  men.  And  the  map  will  be  a  history.  It  will  not, 
however,  be  desirable  to  perpetuate  the  names  which  pio- 
neers and  "prospectors"  have  transiently  attached  from 
their  mean  and  often  foul  vocabularies  to  fresh  wilderness 
scenes.  Of  these  the  following  present  specimens :  "Tarry- 
all  Ranche,"  "  Cash  Creek,"  Gulcher  Diggings,"  "  Buckskin 
Joe,"  "Fair  Play,"  "  Strip-and-at-him  Mine,"  "Hooked- 
Man's  Prairie,"  etc. 

And  before  or  following  after  these  military  occupations 
of  our  inner  expanses  have  gone  the  frontiersmen,  alone 
or  with  their  families.  And  what  description,  but  one  that 


CAPTIVES   IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  363 

includes  infinite  variety  in  feature,  array,  fortune,  charac- 
ter, errand,  and  experience,  will  answer  to  that  race  of 
pioneers,  borderers,  or  frontiersmen  ?  They  have  been  like 
the  people  in  our  cities  and  towns,  —  the  best  and  the 
worst,  and  of  all  shades  and  textures.  Looking  to  the 
promptings  which  move  white  men  to  turn  their  back  upon 
all  civilized  scenes,  we  have  to  recognize  alike  what  is  noble 
and  what  is  base  in  them,  besides  all  those  impulses  which 
are  indifferent  as  regards  moral  qualities,  and  partake 
simply  of  restlessness,  enterprise,  a  love  of  adventure  and 
variety.  Misanthropes,  outlaws,  desperadoes,  and  barbar- 
ized Christians  (so  called)  have  sought  the  woods  and 
wilds,  and  have  moved  on  farther  as  they  have  heard  be- 
hind them  the  tread  of  any  followers  who  may  represent 
humanity.  It  is  curious  to  note  how  soon  individuals 
taken  prisoners,  lost  in  the  woods,  or  dropped  out  from 
the  company  of  the  first  European  explorers,  —  Spanish, 
French,  and  English,  —  long  after  they  had  been  given  up 
as  dead,  found  a  home  among  the  natives,  and  became 
themselves  Indians.  From  time  to  time  we  meet  strange 
surprises  in  the  old  histories,  as  we  read  how  these  lost 
men,  hardly  preserving  enough  of  the  look  and  language 
of  their  former  life  to  make  themselves  known  or  intelli- 
gible to  their  countrymen,  turn  up  at  the  right  moment  to 
serve  as  interpreters  to  a  later  company  of  venturesome 
white  men.  Thus  De  Soto,  on  his  first  march  into  Florida 
from  Tampa  Bay,  sent  a  detachment  to  charge  upon  a  body 
of  the  natives,  in  1539.  An  officer  was  startled  by  the  cry, 
—  seeming  to  come  from  one  of  them,  —  "  Slay  me  not :  I 
am  a  Christian !  "  The  cry  came  from  the  man  named  on 
a  previous  page,  Juan  Ortiz,  a  native  of  Seville  in  Spain, 
who  had  eleven  years  before  been  taken  prisoner  by  the 
Indians  in  the  expedition  of  Narvaez.  He  had  just  the 
accomplishments  which  De  Soto  required  in  the  emergency, 
and  proved  invaluable  to  him.  Instances  of  like  character 
were  frequent ;  and  such  cases  suggest  tlifc  number  of  that 


364  COLONIAL  RELATIONS  WITH   THE  INDIANS. 

class  of  men  on  our  changing  frontiers  who  have  bridged 
over,  in  every  respect,  the  whole  dividing  chasm  between  the 
European  and  the  native,  between  civilization  and  savagery. 
The  red  man  and  the  white  man  on  the  frontiers  have  very 
often  interlinked  their  lot  and  destiny,  and  merged  all  their 
differences.  Hundreds  of  white  men  have  been  barbarized 
n  this  continent  for  each  single  red  man  that  has  been 
civilized.  The  whites  have  assimilated  all  the  traits  and 
qualities  of  the  savage,  and  mastered  his  resources  in  war 
and  hunting,  and  his  shifts  for  living,  in  tricks,  in  subtlety, 
and  cruelty.  And  the  savage  has  been  an  apt  pupil  of  the 
companion  with  whom  he  has  consorted  on  familiar  terms. 
He  has  caught  English  words  enough  to  enable  him  to 
swear,  and,  as  has  been  said,  has  seemed  to  regard  oaths 
as  the  root-terms  of  our  mother  tongue.  And  with  the 
use  of  the  rifle  and  ammunition  the  savage  acquired  the 
taste  for  "  fire-water,"  which  turns  him  into  an  incarnated 
fiend.  He  has  caught  also  the  white  man's  guile  and 
fraudulency,  which,  while  perhaps  no  worse  than  his  own, 
are  of  another  species.  Foul  and  debasing  diseases  have 
come  in  desolating  virulence  from  the  miscegenation  of 
white  and  red  men  on  the  frontiers.  Mixed  breeds  of  every 
shade  and  degree  have  brought  about  the  result,  as  on 
good  vouchers  we  are  informed  that  full  one  sixth  of  those 
classed  among  the  Indians  have  white  kindred,  s 

Doubtless  we  must  credit  some  advantages  and  facilities, 
as  well  as  much  trouble  and  mischief,  to  the  score  of  these 
white  men  —  recreants  to  civilization,  outlaws,  adventur- 
ers, prisoners,  and  half-breeds,  in  all  their  motley  and  mis- 
cellaneous crews  —  who  have  made  themselves  Indians 
among  the  distant  tribes,  in  advance  of  white  settlers  of 
a  better  sort.  They  have  served  as  go-betweens,  as  inter- 
preters, as  scouts  and  guides,  and  have  enabled  Govern- 
ment agents  and  military  officers  to  hold  some  sort  of 
intelligent  intercourse  with  the  natives.  Something,  how- 
ever, is  to  be  abated  from  any  general  statement  of  the 


INDIANIZED   WHITE   MEN.  365 

use  of  these  semi-barbarized  white  residents  among  the  In- 
dians, in  their  very  responsible  functions  as  interpreters. 
Grave  consequences,  very  serious  issues,  costly  money  bar- 
gains, and  complicated  covenants  in  sum  and  detail  have 
often  been  set  in  very  risky  dependence  upon  the  intelli- 
gence, the  skill,  and  the  integrity  of  these  interpreters. 
There  is  no  question  but  that  on  very  many  important 
occasions  of  treaty  and  agreement  in  settling  feuds  and 
entering  into  stipulations,  sometimes  the  Government, 
sometimes  the  Indians,  sometimes  both  parties,  have  suf- 
fered from  the  incompetency  or  dishonesty  of  these  inter- 
preters. It  has  been  comparatively  easy  for  these  men, 
living  with  and  adopting  the  habits  of  the  Indians,  to  catch 
the  few  words  in  common  use,  —  names  of  persons  and 
objects,  terms  of  ordinary  occurrence  in  the  converse  of 
the  camp,  the  hunt,  and  the  woods,  —  while  at  the  same 
time  the  interpreter,  if  himself  capable  of  evolving  abstract 
ideas  and  of  the  higher  processes  of  thought,  explanation, 
and  argument,  would  be  wholly  unable  to  make  them  mat- 
ters of  intelligible  expression  in  the  language  or  dialect 
of  a  rude  tribe.  And  there  are  occasions  in  which  an  in- 
terpreter may  find  his  account  in  deceiving  and  bringing 
about  a  serious  misunderstanding  between  the  parties  with 
whom  he  is  supposed  to  be  a  competent  and  trustworthy 
medium.  Many  shrewd  agents  and  army  officers  have 
agreed  with  a  remark  made  by  Colonel  Dodge,  in  his  "  Life 
on  the  Plains,"  that  there  are  special  occasions  on  which 
there  ought  to  be  several  interpreters  present,  so  that  each 
might,  out  of  the  hearing  of  others,  give  his  version  of  what 
is  said  on  either  side. 

But  these  individual  whites  and  half-breeds  who  have 
affiliated  and  assimilated  themselves  with  the  Indians 
(outlaws,  desperadoes,  adventurers,  or  merely  trappers, 
hunters,  and  restless  roamers)  are  precursors  of  another 
set  of  men, — a  class  of  frontiersmen,  who  are  in  the  advance 
of  actual  settlers  with  their  families  on  our  shifting  bor- 


366  COLONIAL   RELATIONS   WITH    THE   INDIANS. 

ders,  intending  at  least  a  temporary  occupancy  of  the  bush 
or  the  valley,  even  if  they  afterward  move  or  "  locate " 
themselves,  as  their  word  is,  on  a  new  spot.  These  self- 
reliant  men,  not  infrequently  too  with  wives  and  children 
who  match  them  in  their  vigor  and  resource,  passing  be- 
yond the  ever-moving  line  and  tide  of  emigration,  have 
been  well  described  as  hanging  like  the  froth  of  the  billows 
on  its  very  edge.  These,  too,  are  a  miscellaneous  gather- 
ing from  our  common  humanity.  While  there  have  been 
among  them  law-defying  scoundrels  and  wretches,  carry- 
ing with  them  every  form  of  demoralization  and  disease 
with  which  depraved  humanity  in  its  most  degraded 
wrecks  is  ever  afflicted,  there  have  been  also  some  who, 
discouraged  by  the  selfish  competitions  and  the  struggling 
rivalries  of  human  society  alike  in  city  and  village,  have 
been  ready  to  sacrifice  what  would  be  their  stinted  share 
in  the  blessings  of  civilization  for  a  hap-hazard  lot  in  the 
woods. 

These,  however,  are  all  scarcely  more  than  the  rags  and 
tatters  of  humanity,  fringing  the  borders  between  civiliza- 
tion and  savagery.  The  legitimate  and  substantial  char- 
acteristics of  frontier  life,  steady  and  permanent  in  its 
hold  upon  each  league  of  advance  on  this  continent,  are 
found  in  a  class  of  persons,  always  to  be  named  with  re- 
spect, and  to  be  regarded  with  a  profound  and  admiring 
sympathy.  They  have  gone  out  to  labor,  and  to  endure 
all  manner  of  sacrifices,  buffetings,  and  risks,  with  a  view 
oftener  to  the  ultimate  prosperity  of  their  families  than 
their  own.  The  romance  of  their  lives,  their  exposure, 
their  general  success,  was  an  element  in  which  they  had 
no  conscious  share  ;  for  all  was  reality  to  them, — prose,  not 
poetry :  the  romantic  is  for  other  persons  and  other  times 
to  appreciate.  It  has  come  to  be  a  common  and  pleasant 
fancy  or  opinion  among  vast  numbers  of  our  citizens,  that 
we  must  henceforward  look  for  our  great  statesmen,  our 
presidents  and  high  officials  in  the  nation's  service,  to 


THE  PIONEERS  OP  CIVILIZATION.  367 

those  of  a  third  or  even  a  second  generation  in  descent 
from  such  of  these  pioneers  as  in  circumstance  or  training, 
through  the  brain,  or  fibre,  or  blood  of  parentage  in  father 
or  mother,  have  developed  their  signal  powers  in  frontier 
life,  —  as  Lincoln,  who,  rising  before  us  as  if  moulded  of 
Western  clay,  was  transformed  before  our  eyes  into  a  statue 
of  Carrara  marble. 

It  has  been  largely  with  these  legitimate  frontier  settlers, 
and  in  their  behalf  and  interest,  that  the  successive  conten- 
tions and  quarrels  of  our  Government  with  the  savage  tribes 
have  found  their  origin  and  embitterment.  I  have  used  the 
word  "  legitimate  "  in  reference  to  these  advanced  pioneers 
of  civilization  on  our  borders.  The  rightful  use  of  the  word 
will  be  disputed  only  by  those  who  are  prepared  to  stand 
for  the  theory  that  barbarism  has  prior  and  superior  rights 
over  civilization,  to  the  occupancy  of  the  earth's  territory. 
As  the  waters  of  the  sea  seek  their  freest  flow  with  their 
refreshing  tides  up  every  river,  inlet,  and  creek,  so  vigor- 
ous and  vitalized  humanity  expands  and  penetrates  every- 
where, seeking  fresh  fields.  The  people  among  us  who  are 
the  Government  claim  freedom  of  unoccupied  soil ;  and  all 
soil  is  in  their  view  unoccupied,  which  is  not  wrought  upon 
by  human  toil,  cleared,  fenced,  tilled,  dug,  and  improved. 
Our  frontier  settlers  are  agents  and  witnesses  of  the  transi- 
tion between  the  wilderness  and  the  cultivated  field.  They 
come  into  immediate  contact  with  the  Indians,  by  a  colli- 
sion of  interests.  The  rights  which  each  party  assumes 
and  claims  cannot  be  adjusted  between  them,  because  the 
basis  on  which  they  respectively  rest  is  not  common  in  its 
nature  and  reasonableness  to  both  parties. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

MISSIONARY  EFFORTS   AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

I.  General  Remarks  on  Aims  and  Methods  in  the   Work. — II.  Roman 
Catholic  Missionaries.  —  III.  Protestant  Missionaries. 

IN  the  Introductory  pages  of  this  volume  a  brief  refer- 
ence was  made  to  the  fact  that  many  earnest  and  costly 
efforts  had  been  exerted  by  the  white  colonists  of  this  con- 
tinent to  offset  and  atone  for,  by  benefits  and  blessings,  the 
injuries  they  had  inflicted  upon  the  natives.  The  subject 
of  Christian  missions  for  their  conversion,  civilization,  and 
instruction  was  deferred  for  this  more  deliberate  treatment. 
So  large  and  comprehensive  a  theme  as  this,  with  all  its 
variety  of  material  and  interest,  can  be  dealt  with  here  only 
with  a  conciseness  hardly  consistent  with  its  importance. 
It  will  be  convenient  to  distribute  the  contents  of  this  chap- 
ter under  the  three  sections  indicated  in  its  title. 

I.  General  Remarks  on  Aims  and  Methods  of  Missions. 
—  The  severest  test  to  which  the  Christian  religion  has 
ever  been  subjected  is  not  that  of  a  critical  searching  by 
scholars  of  its  historical  documents  ;  nor  that  of  an  acute, 
speculative,  and  often  irreverent  philosophy  ;  nor  even  that 
of  an  estimate  of  its  practical  effect  upon  the  characters 
and  lives  of  its  professors.  The  sternest  and  sharpest  trial 
of  Christianity  has  corne  from  the  attempts  made  by  its 
instrumentality  to  instruct,  reclaim,  convert,  indoctrinate, 
and  redeem  a  race  of  heathen  savages.  The  trial  on  quite 


THE  MISSIONARY   WORK.  369 

another  field  has  been  a  severe  one,  and  as  yet  without 
decisive  or  satisfactory  results,  in  the  attempts  to  Chris- 
tianize civilized  heathen, — those  reclaimed  from  barbarism, 
but  still  pagan  (as  we  call  them),  —  and  the  Orientals  who 
hold  to  more  or  less  adequate  religions  of  their  own.  But 
it  is  with  the  efforts  to  Christianize  barbarians,  savages, 
that  we  are  now  concerned.  We  accept  at  the  start  the 
formidable  obstacles  to  be  encountered  in  offering  to  sav- 
age people  a  religion  which  had  its  birth  and  development 
under  a  highly  advanced  civilization,  and  which  requires 
and  implies  a  state  of  society  intelligent,  refined,  and  ele- 
vated, for  its  existence  and  exercise.  With  a  qualification 
more  or  less  emphatic  to  be  made  for  the  opinions  and 
aims  of  the  Jesuit  missionaries,  all  who  have  labored  in 
this  arduous  field  have  strongly  and  decidedly  affirmed 
their  full  conviction  that  civilization  must  precede,  or  step 
by  step  accompany,  every  effort  to  Christianize  our  Indians. 
Of  course  it  was  understood  that  the  two  agencies  were  to 
be  mutually  helpful.  But,  as  a  general  rule,  the  religious 
lesson,  the  condemnation  of  the  faith  which  the  savage  was 
supposed  to  hold,  and  the  urgent  proffer  of  a  substitute 
for  it,  have  preceded  any  actual  redemption  of  the  savage 
from  barbarism  to  a  stage  of  civilization.  The  Jesuit  view 
of  missionary  duty  and  success  consisted  with  the  allow- 
ance of  a  great  deal  of  undisturbed  savagery,  ignorance, 
and  intellectual  torpidity.  The  Protestant  idea  has  always 
involved  the  absolute  necessity  of  civilization  for  Chris- 
tianization.  Christianity  implies  a  civilized  state  for  man. 
Its  institutions,  principles,  and  occupations  of  life,  —  its 
habits,  virtues,  charities,  can  coexist  only  with  civilized 
people.  It  first  appeared  among  a  civilized  community, 
with  letters,  arts,  and  laws,  and  is  vitally  dependent  upon 
them.  The  Christian  religion  also  is  eminently,  and  above 
all  other  of  its  qualities  beside  those  which  concern  its 
individual  influences,  a  missionary  religion.  It  once  had 
but  a  dozen  voices  to  proclaim  it,  a  dozen  laborers  in  its 

24 


370  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

vineyard.  Through  them  it  went  forth  from  a  despised 
province  of  the  Roman  empire,  even  beyond  its  farthest 
bounds,  to  make  disciples  in  faith  of  those  not  held  in  law 
or  tribute  to  its  sway.  It  is  a  profoundly  serious  and 
interesting  subject  for  those  responsible  for  its  wise  dis-. 
cussion,  to  account  for  the  comparative  lack  of  energy  and 
success  in  modern  missionary  enterprises  when  set  in  con- 
trast with  those  of  the  earlier  Christian  ages.  Is  it  that 
the  missionaries  have  lost  their  zeal,  their  fervor,  their 
skill  and  power,  in  their  work ;  or  that  what  they  offer, 
without  much  response  of  acceptance  or  gratitude  from  the 
subjects  of  their  labor,  is  not  the  simple  original  boon  of 
blessing  once  so  triumphant  in  its  peaceful  conquests  ? 

More  than  three  centuries  have  passed  through  all  of 
which  the  solemn  avowals  of  nations  calling  themselves 
Christians,  and  claiming  as  such  lofty  prerogatives,  have 
recognized,  in  obligation  and  purpose,  the  duty  of  ""making 
fellow-Christians  of  our  aboriginal  tribes.  These  nations 
have  had  large  resources  and  appliances.  They  could  cross 
mysterious  and  overshadowed  oceans.  They  could  take 
possession  of  vast  reaches  of  territory,  and  assert  easily 
and  successfully  their  towering  and  divine  right  over  wild 
lands  and  wild  people.  Making  sure  of  conquest  and  pos- 
session, they  palliated  or  justified  all  that  there  was  of 
incidental  woe  or  wrong,  all  the  spoiling  and  tragic  suffer- 
ing of  the  heathen,  by  the  supreme  and  ultimate  purpose 
of  blessing  and  saving  them.  There  was  no  misgiving  as 
to  the  fearfulness  of  the  doom  awaiting  them  hereafter 
simply  because  they  were  heathen  and  had  had  the  direful 
misfortune  of  being  born  under  a  curse.  In  view  of  that, 
any  infliction  visited  on  them  during  their  lifetime  was  of 
trivial  consequence ;  and  all  outrages  and  enormities  prac- 
tised upon  them  were  only  blessed  means  of  discipline,  if 
committed  with  an  ultimate  view  to  their  conversion.  The 
creed  of  the  invaders  embraced  two  tenets, —  one,  the  des- 
perate condition  of  the  natives ;  the  other,  the  solemn  obli- 


THE   DIFFERENT   ESTIMATES   OF   THE   WORK.  371 

gation  of  Christians  to  save  them  through  a  boon  which 
Christians  could  impart.  Both  these  tenets  pointed  to  the 
same  duty  of  securing  their  conversion. 

With  the  instigation  of  that  master  and  mighty  motive, 
the  redeeming  units  or  millions  of  our  human  race  from  an 
appalling  doom,  what  has  been  accomplished  in  positive 
results  by  all  Christian  effort  ?  Unquestionably  there  have 
been  results  which  candor  and  charity  and  appreciative 
estimates  may  plead  with  a  varying  measure  of  satisfac- 
tion ;  there  have  been  translations  of  the  Scriptures,  and 
good  books,  grammars,  dictionaries,  and  primers,  for  sacred 
instruction;  there  have  been  missionary  posts,  schools, 
churches,  and  converted  and  educated  native  preachers, 
with  their  native  flocks.  But  how  limited,  inadequate,  and 
unsatisfactory  in  the  sum  are  all  these  results!  Every 
branch  and  communion  of  the  Christian  Church  —  Roman, 
Puritan,  Moravian,  Episcopal,  Quaker,  Baptist,  Methodist 
— has  established  and  maintained  missionary  labors  among 
our  Indians.  No  one  of  these  Christian  fellowships  —  with 
a  possible  exception,  soon  to  be  recognized,  in  the  work  of 
Jesuit  missionaries  — ^Tias  ever  found  self-satisfaction  in  its 
success.  Nearly  every  effort  made  by  them,  after  signs  of 
promise  and  reward,  has  failed,  most  of  them  with  accom- 
paniments of  deep  sadness  and  overwhelming  disaster. 

Perhaps  the  very  best  relief  or  palliation  to  be  found  for 
all  the  shortcomings,  the  wasted  labors,  the  failures  of 
Christians  in  their  purposed  efforts  to  convert  the  heathen 
here  or  elsewhere,  is  to  be  spoken  in  this  confession ; 
namely,  that  during  all  these  ages  a  constant  and  earnest 
debate,  sometimes  a  very  passionate  and  angry  one,  has 
been  going  on  among  Christians  themselves — the  very  best 
and  most  intelligent  of  them  —  as  to,  What  is  Christianity; 
what  makes  a  Christian ;  what  is  it  to  be  a  Christian  ? 
This  question  has  been  put  and  kept  in  a  sort  of  chan- 
cery suit ;  and  it  is  by  no  means  out  of  court  yet,  nor  really 
carried  up  by  consent  to  the  court  of  last  resort.  And 


372  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG    THE    INDIANS. 

probably  the  utmost  and  the  best  which  the  wisest  and  saint- 
liest  persons  among  us  would  claim  is,  that  they  have  very 
slowly  been  growing  to  comprehend  for  themselves  what 
Christianity  really  is.  These  radical  differences  of  opinion 
among  Christians  themselves  as  to  the  substance,  the  mean- 
ing, the  work,  and  the  effective  fruits  and  triumphs  of  their 
own  religion  cover  the  whole  field  of  opinion,  means, 
efforts,  agencies,  and  desired  results  involved  in  it.  Is 
the  religion  a  very  simple  or  a  very  abstruse  one  in  its  ele- 
ments, statements,  and  principles  ?  Does  it  appeal  to  the 
common  understanding  and  reasoning  powers  of  man,  or 
does  it  envelop  itself  in  mysteries,  in  perplexing  doctrines 
which  are  to  be  announced  on  authority  and  accepted  with 
implicit,  unquestioning  assent  ?  May  it  be  directly  received 
and  appropriated,  in  its  lessons  and  spirit  and  full  effects, 
by  each  individual ;  or  does  it  require,  to  make  it  effective, 
the  instrumentalities  of  a  priesthood,  with  commission, 
functions,  organization,  institutions,  and  a  human  medium- 
ship  and  an  ecclesiastical  system  ?  And  then  as  to  disciple- 
ship  of  this  religion,  such  as  entitles  one  to  the  name  and 
secures  to  him  the  benefits  of  it,  —  what  are  the  essential 
terms  and  conditions  ?  The  alternative  answers  to  this 
question  of  course  are  the  holding  or  assenting  to  certain 
tenets  for  belief  and  conviction ;  or  the  forming  of  a  certain 
character  and  the  leading  a  certain  course  of  life.  But 
this  answer  does  not  cover  the  whole  question,  as  it  still 
leaves  open  the  whole  scope  of  the  inquiry  whether  the  be- 
lief required  is  simply  that  which  will  have  a  practical 
effect  on  character  and  conduct,  or  a  professed  assent  to 
doctrines  and  dogmas  which  lie  wholly  out  of  the  range  of 
our  knowledge,  and  which  cannot  be  put  to  any  test  for 
proving  their  actual  verity,  but  must  be  accepted  through 
the  assumed  authority  of  the  teacher.  How  earnestly  and 
passionately  these  vital  questions  have  been  discussed  by 
those  who  have  been  equals  in  sincerity,  intellectual  vigor, 
and  ability  to  form  unbiassed  opinions,  and  into  what  sharp 


DISCORDANT   TEACHINGS.  373 

and  even  embittered  parties  differences  of  conviction  have 
driven  them,  needs  no  recognition  here. 

And  if  the  question,  "  What  is  Christianity,  in  the  sub- 
stance of  its  teaching  as  vital  truth,  and  in  the  effect  to  be 
produced  by  it  upon  life?"  has  proved  a  puzzling  and  a  dis- 
tracting one  to  the  most  intelligent  and  cultivated  of  our 
race,  what  must  be  its  perplexity  when  an  attempt  is  made 
to  teach  it  to  barbarians,  and,  as  the  word  is,  to  convert 
them  to  it  ?  If,  while  progress  appears  to  be  making  here 
or  there  in  Christianizing  a  tribe  by  one  school  of  mission- 
aries, the  barbarians  come  to  learn  that  another  class  of 
missionaries,  professing  the  same  religion,  condemn  their 
first  teachers  as  false  deceivers,  and  offer  quite  different 
lessons  and  doctrines,  what  must  be  the  consequence  ? 
Over  and  over  again  has  that  perplexity  been  visited  upon 
the  heathen  in  various  regions,  but  especially  here  among 
our  Indians.  As  to  sincerity  in  belief  and  purpose,  it  would 
be  a  simple  piece  of  impertinence  to  attempt  to  decide 
which  had  the  most  of  it  or  the  more  of  it,  the  Jesuit 
Father  or  the  Puritan  and  Moravian  missionary.  They  were 
both  alike  sincere  to  the  very  core  of  their  hearts ;  and  yet 
they  looked  upon  each  other  as  fatally  deceived  and  as  mis- 
leading and  endangering  their  converts.  Frequent  refer- 
ences are  to  be  found  in  our  missionary  literature  to  the 
intense  dislike  and  disapprobation,  and  the  dread  and  hor- 
ror, and  even  hate,  which  the  Catholic  and  the  Protestant 
missionaries  among  our  Indians  have  felt  and  expressed 
towards  each  other.  Evidently  each  party  thought  that  the 
other  might  better  have  left  the  Indians  in  their  natural 
heathenism  than  have  taken  them  out  of  it  into  deadly 
heresy.  As  between  the  parties  themselves,  of  course  not 
a  word  is  to  be  said  here ;  it  is  the  natural  and  inevitable 
effect  upon  the  Indians  of  such  distracting  teaching  that 
we  have  in  view.  When  our  New  England  fishing-smacks 
went  to  trade  or  our  soldiers  to  fight  with  Indians  on  our 
Eastern  coasts,  they  fell  in  with  natives  who  were  under 


374  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG  THE   INDIANS. 

the  training  of  the  French  priests.  Our  people  told  these 
natives  that  their  priests,  though  calling  themselves  Chris- 
tians, were  deceivers  and  idolaters,  and  were  luring  them 
to  everlasting  perdition.  The  priests  taught  their  converts 
to  feply  that  the  New  Englanders  were  wicked  heretics, 
children  of  hell  themselves,  into  which  they  would  carry 
all  who  trusted  in  them.  Occasions  there  doubtless  were 
in  which  an  Indian  trained  by  a  French  Jesuit,  and  one 
trained  by  a  Dutch  Dominie  or  a  New  England  Puritan, 
might  have  rested  in  the  woods  to  discuss  or  quarrel  over 
their  creeds,  —  affording  us  a  reduced  copy  of  Milton's 
angels,  when  they  "  reasoned  high,  and  found  no  end,  in 
wandering  mazes  lost." 

This  is  no  place  or  occasion  for  polemical  discussions  or 
for  entering  into  religious  controversies.  Our  concern  is 
only  with  facts  and  incidents  which  present  themselves  as 
we  engage  with  that  profoundly  interesting  subject  in  its 
historical  relations,  —  the  attempts  to  Christianize  our  sav- 
ages. Let  us  go  back  for  a  moment  to  first  principles. 

The  Author  and  Teacher  of  the  Christian  religion  gave 
utterance  to  the  most  sublime  and  august  conception  which 
has  ever  had  expression  on  this  earth  for  all  time :  it  was 
the  conception  of  one  world-wide  and  universal  religion, 
comprehensive  of  the  'whole  human  race ;  independent  of 
time,  place,  or  condition.  His  commission  and  promise  to 
his  messengers  were :  Go  out  over  all  the  world  and  preach 
the  gospel  to  every  creature :  go  and  teach  all  nations.  I 
will  be  with  you  as  you  do  it.  No  unanointed  lips  ever 
spoke  forth  such  an  utterance  as  that.  And  the  message 
was  described  as  one  of  "  Glad  tidings  of  great  joy,  which 
shall  be  to  all  people."  As  that  religion  would  compre- 
hend all  people,  it  would  unite  and  benefit  them  all. 

Three  very  simple  but  most  essential  conditions  are  im- 
plied in  that  commission:  first,  that  the  religion  taught 
should  be  intelligible  to  all  persons  of  our  average  human- 
ity ;  second,  that  it  should  be  practicable,  so  as  to  be  com- 


SALVATION   AND   CIVILIZATION.  375 

plied  with ;  third,  that  it  should  produce  good  effects,  and 
prove  a  blessing.  There  should  be  nothing  in  the  message 
but  what  the.  simple  and  well-meaning  could  understand 
when  spoken ;  what  it  required  and  prescribed  in  character, 
conduct,  and  way  of  life  should  admit  of  being  put  into 
practice  in  any  climate  or  country,  in  any  age,  by  every 
class  of  people ;  and  this  practical  trial  of  the  religion  should 
have  a  direct  effect  of  good,  with  benefits  and  blessings  for 
all.  Such  are  the  primary  essentials  of  a  universal  reli- 
gion. No  idealizing  of  any  teaching  with  the  institutions 
into  which  it  should  organize  itself  could  enhance  the  at- 
tractions or  the  expected  practical  benefits  of  such  a  religion 
offered  to  men.  Language  (and  that  the  most  simple)  and 
sympathetic  benevolence  would  seem  to  be  the  only  agen- 
cies needed  as  a  medium  in  communicating  it  successively 
to  those  all  over  the  globe  who  could  be  reached  by  its  mis- 
sionaries. Here  again  we  have  a  problem  most  worthy  of 
engaging,  for  the  instruction  of  all,  the  thought  and  wis- 
dom of  the  responsible  teachers  of  truth,  to  explain  to  us 
whether  the  neglect  to  keep  in  view  one,  two,  or  all  three 
of  those  essentials  of  a  world-wide  religion  is  chargeable 
for  the  very  limited  success  of  modern  missionary  effort. 

The  rich  experience  gathered  from  missionary  labors 
among  the  heathen  here  and  elsewhere  has  drawn  out  very 
distinctly  and  sharply  among  professed  Christians  a  radical 
difference  of  opinion  and  estimate  applied  to  their  religion, 
which  we  may  state  in  plain  and  familiar  terms  as  amount- 
ing to  this :  one  class  of  persons  will  interpret  and  value 
and  teach  Christianity,  as  the  means  of  saving  souls  one  by 
one,  redeeming  them  from  guilt  and  an  endless  doom  of 
woe ;  another  class  look  away  from  this  individual  work  of 
Christianity  save  as  each  will  have  a  share  in  a  common 
good,  and  identify  Christianity  with  a  general  influence  of 
civilizing,  humanizing,  refining,  elevating,  and  reforming 
effects  on  whole  communities.  The  one  class  will,  so  to 
speak,  view  this  work  of  individual  conversion  and  salva- 


376  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG  THE   INDIANS. 

tion  as  in  this  respect  like  the  inoculation  of  persons,  one 
by  one,  to  secure  them  from  a  terrible  sweeping  pestilence, 
or  like  the  escape  of  a  favored  few  in  the  long-boat  from  a 
crowded  company  on  a  sinking  ship.  The  other  class  will 
survey  a  whole  community,  and  judge  of  the  evidence  of  the 
presence  and  effect  of  Christianity  by  the  amount  of  virtue, 
justice,  righteousness,  wide-spreading,  humanizing,  and  ele- 
vating influences  and  charities  in  it. 

Now,  according  as  different  persons  have  in  their  minds 
the  one  or  the  other  of  these  views  as  to  what  Christianity 
means,  what  it  is  to  effect,  and  what  are  the  evidences  of 
its  presence  and  influence,  will  they  decide  very  differently 
upon  the  matter  of  fact  as  to  what  has  been  accomplished 
by  missionary  labor  in  Christianizing  the  Indians.  We  can 
turn  to  many  pages  written  in  a  devout,  cheering,  and  hope- 
ful tone,  filled  with  details,  statistics,  personal  narratives 
and  proofs,  which  confidently  assure  the  reader  that  a  glo- 
rious, blessed,  and  benedictive  work  has  been  done  by 
Christian  missions  among  the  Indians,  crowning  them  with 
a  success  fully  proportioned  to  the  faith  and  cost  and  toil 
spent  upon  them.  We  can  turn  to  other  pages,  not  always, 
though  it  may  be  for  the  larger  part,  written  by  sceptics,  the 
indifferent,  and  the  worldly, — for  some  of  them  come  from 
thoroughly  good,  sincere,  and  philanthropic  witnesses, — 
affirming  that  Christianity  has  not  on  any  extensive  field 
made  any  perceptible  change  in  the  manners,  characters, 
and  lives  of  savages.  Those  who  are  but  moderately  versed 
in  the  missionary  literature  of  recent  times  are  well  aware 
that  while  the  work  of  which  it  is  the  record  assures  the 
confidence  of  its  supporters  in  the  generous  supply  of  funds 
for  sustaining  it,  "  men  of  the  world,"  so  called,  are  more 
than  dubious  about  its  rewards. 

We  can  refer  this  discordance  of  judgment  and  testi- 
mony among  discreet  and  sincere  persons  only  to  that 
radical  difference  of  estimate  just  stated,  as  to  what  is 
Christianity,  its  real  effective  work,  and  the  evidence  of 


THE  GOSPEL  MESSAGE.  377 

it.  The  count  of  a  number  of  persons  who  individually, 
one  by  one,  have  been  converted  and  "found  salvation," 
a  church,  a  Sunday-school,  native  teachers,  prayer-meetings, 
etc.,  established  among  a  tribe  or  settlement  of  Indians, 
are  satisfactory  evidence  to  one  class  of  Christianization. 
Other  observers  look  on.  They  ask  this  question  :  Suppose  L 
the  white  man  and  all  his  influence,  supplies,  and  helps 
were  withdrawn  to-day  from  that  Indian  community,  and 
it  were  left  wholly  to  itself,  would  not  the  surviving  ele- 
ment of  ignorance  and  barbarism  in  it  very  soon  overbear 
aadr  kill  out  its  feeble  stage  of  Christian  civilization  ? 

-The  case  is  presented  thus :  The  Christian  missionary 
comes  to  the  savages  with  the  evangel,  the  gospel,  the 
glad  tidings  of  great  joy.  His  first  intelligible  message 
to  them  is  that  they  are  a  wrecked  and  ruined  race,  born 
under  a  curse,  and  destined  to  an  appalling  doom,  to  live 
forever  in  suffering;  and  he  offers  them  a  way  of  escape, 
one  by  one.  Now  the  Indians  certainly  had  no  previous 
knowledge  that  they  were  in  such  an  awful  condition,  with 
such  a  dreadful  destiny  before  them ;  and  so  far  as  they 
bring  a  questioning,  reasoning  mind  to  bear  upon  the  sub- 
ject, the  explanation  given  to  them  of  how  they  came  to 
be  in  such  an  awful  plight  —  of  a  race  cursed  for  the  sin 
of  the  first  man  —  may  be  wholly  unsatisfactory.  So  far, 
the  announcement  made  to  them  cannot  be  called  "good 
news,"  whether  coming,  as  it  did  alike,  from  Jesuit  or 
from  Protestant.  The  gospel  quality  of  the  message  came 
in  afterwards,  as  applied  to  the  means  of  escape,  the  way 
of  relief,  from  their  curse  and  doom.  Here  the  Jesuit  and 
the  Protestant  were  found  by  the  Indians  to  part  com- 
pany. The  one  held  up  a  book  as  the  means  of  deliver- 
ance ;  the  other,  the  mediation  of  the  Church.  The  priest 
himself,  not  only  as  the  teacher  of  simple  lessons,  but  as 
a  personal  medium  of  sacramental  graces,  was  the  essen- 
tial agent  for  securing  salvation  to  the  Indians.  In  the 
nature  of  things  it  was  utterly  impossible  for  the  savage 


378  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS  AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

to  understand  how  the  drops  of  baptismal  water  on  his 
forehead,  and  the  fragment  of  the  holy  wafer,  remedied 
his  foredoomed  subjection  to  the  eternal  pit  of  woe.  He 
accepted  the  relation  between  the  evil  and  its  relief  on 
the  word  of  the  priest.  And  we  may  recognize,  in  effect, 
the  same  perplexity  for  the  savage  in  trying  to  appre- 
hend the  curative  process  wrought  by  the  Puritan  creed  as 
drawn  from  a  most  mysterious  book,  which,  though  held 
in  the  hand  of  a  man,  was  made  and  given  by  the  infinite 
spirit  above. 

Loskiel,  in  his  "History  of  the  Moravian  Mission  in 
North  America,"  gives  the  following  as  the  address  of  the 
Missionary  Rauch  to  a  tribe  of  Indians  in  Shekomeko,  on 
the  borders  of  New  York  and  Connecticut,  in  1740:  — 

"  I  came  hither  from  beyond  the  great  ocean,  to  bring  unto  you 
the  glad  tidings  that  God,  our  Creator,  so  loved  us  that  he  became 
a  man,  lived  thirty  years  in  this  world,  went  about  doing  good  to 
all  men,  and  at  last  for  our  sins  was  nailed  to  the  cross,  on  which 
he  shed  his  precious  blood,  and  died  for  us,  that  we  might  be  de- 
livered from  sin,  saved  by  his  merits,  and  become  heirs  of  everlast- 
ing life.  On  the  third  day  he  rose  again  from  the  dead,  ascended 
into  Heaven,  where  he  sits  upon  his  throne  of  glory,  but  yet  is 
always  present  with  us,  though  we  see  him  not  with  our  bodily 
eyes  ;  and  his  only  desire  is  to  show  his  love  unto  us,"  etc. 

The  missionary  says  he  perceived  to  his  sorrow  that  his 
words  "  excited  derision,"  and  that  his  hearers  "  openly 
laughed  him  to  scorn."  Yet  persevering  steadfastly  upon 
this  doctrinal  or  dogmatic  interpretation  of  the  gospel  as 
the  basis  for  preaching  and  the  work  of  conversion,  the 
Moravians  soon  began  to  have  such  a  measure  of  success 
as  gratified  them.  Less  than  any  class  of  Indian  mis- 
sionaries holding  in  substance  the  same  dogmatic  creed,  did 
they  attempt  to  deal  with  its  metaphysical  or  perplexing 
elements.  They  tried  not  to  overtask  the  intelligence  of 
their  rude  and  simple  hearers.  From  their  church  regis- 
ter, under  date  of  1772,  it  appears  that  they  had  baptized 


DIFFERENCES   OF  METHOD.  379 

seven  hundred  and  twenty  converts.  Nor  did  they  by  any 
means  perform  that  rite  on  the  easy  terms  with  which 
the  Jesuit  Fathers  were  satisfied.  They  required  of  the 
candidates  protracted,  patient,  and  intentionally  thorough 
previous  discipline  as  evidence  that  they  understood  and 
appreciated  the  significance  of  the  rite,  and  consistency  of 
feeling  and  conduct  after  it.  The  Moravians  were  espe- 
cially faithful  in  didactic,  moral  teachings,  in  purity,  sin- 
cerity, and  integrity, — making  changed  habits  and  manners 
essential.  The  Moravians  also  insisted,  as  much  as  did  the 
Friends,  on  peace  principles.  Their  converts  were  to  be 
non-combatants.  To  this  we  are  to  ascribe  in  large  part 
the  trials  and  sufferings  and  removals  to  which  they  were 
subjected.  The  heathen  Indians  despised  them  as  cow- 
ards, lacking  in  patriotism,  and  the  whites  believed  they 
were  secretly  treacherous. 

Apart  from  all  deeper  tests  and  the  preferences  resting 
upon  our  individual  views  and  beliefs,  we  may  freely  ad- 
mit and  even  commend  the  great  advantages  which  the 
Roman  Catholic  forms  and  methods  have  over  the  bare 
and  didactic  teachings  of  Protestants,  in  effecting  what  is 
called  the  "  conversion  "  of  savages.  The  ceremonies,  the 
altar  ritual,  the  emblems  and  symbols  of  the  old  Church 
— often  as  easy  of  exhibition  and  as  readily  furnished  in 
a  wilderness,  and  really  perhaps  more  imposing  and  im- 
pressive in  the  rude  forest  surroundings,  in  groves,  on 
lake  and  river  shores,  than  anywhere  else — would  be  at- 
tractive, even  awing,  to  simple,  childlike  people.  The  very 
few  and  the  very  elemental  lessons,  positively  spoken, 
never  argued,  never  explained,  in  which  the  accompanying 
teachings  were  conveyed,  asking  only  assent  and  implicit 
faith,  would  not  make  a  severe  exaction  on  the  savage 
mind.  That  mind  was  called  a  docile  one  because  of  the 
facility  with  which  it  yielded  its  assent, — all  the  readier, 
as  the  Jesuits  themselves  allowed,  in  exact  proportion  to 
the  lack  of  comprehension  of  what  was  taught.  Father 


380  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE  INDIANS. 

Garzes,  on  his  mission  in  Upper  California,  carried  a  can- 
vas banner,  with  the  Virgin  Mary  attractively  drawn  on 
one  side,  and  the  Devil  stirring  the  flames  of  hell  on  the 
other.  This  he  uufurled  when  he  reached  an  Indian  vil- 
lage. The  natives  of  course  exclaimed,  of  one  side,  "It 
is  good;"  of  the  other,  "It  is  bad."  The  more  glaring 
a  painting  the  better  was  it  suited  for  use  in  a  mission 
chapel.  Perouse  said  the  picture  of  hell  in  the  church  of 
San  Carlos  had  done  a  mighty  work  of  conversion,  where 
Protestantism,  without  images  or  ceremonies,  would  have 
been  powerless.  The  other  side  of  the  same  banner-pic- 
ture, which  presented  the  charms  of  Paradise,  was  wholly 
ineffective.  The  Indians  pronounced  it  "  tame."  Langs- 
dorff  tells  us  of  the  wonders  wrought  "  by  a  figure  of  the 
Virgin  Mary  represented  as  springing  from  the  coronal  of 
leaves  of  the  great  American  aloe,  instead  of  the  ordinary 
stem." 

The  Roman  Church  has  been  in  a  measure  compelled 
—  and  shall  we  not  say  justified  ?  —  in  its  abundant  and 
various  use  of  the  scenic,  dramatic,  symbolic,  and  ritual 
element  in  addressing  such  masses  of  the  ignorant,  rude, 
and  simple  in  deserts  and  wildernesses.  These  are  the 
same  scenic  and  ritualistic  elements  which,  lifted  by  re- 
fining tastes  and  elegant  appliances,  with  vestments,  music, 
and  processionals,  have  the  highest  aesthetic  effect  for  the 
most  cultivated. 

f  Father  Palon's  first  baptism  on  one  of  his  missions  in 
California  must  have  exhibited  an  interesting  family  group. 
An  Indian  presented  himself  with  a  mother  and  three 
daughters,*to  all  four  of  whom  he  was  the  husband,  and 
each  of  the  daughters  offered  a  son  by  him  for  baptism. 
The  infants  were  nearly  of  the  same  age.  The  dependence 
upon  their  ritual  altar  furnishing  must,  however,  at  times 
have  embarrassed  the  good  Fathers.  We  read  that  after 
De  Soto's  disastrous  battle  at  Mobile,  in  October,  1540,  in 
which  all  his  sacramental  furniture  was  burned,  the  priests 


PERPLEXITIES   OP  DOCTRINE.  381 

and  officers  held  a  council  to  consider  if  they  might  substi- 
tute the  meal  of  Indian  corn  for  wheat  flour  for  the  Mass. 
It  was  decided  that  they  could  not.  The  vestments  and 
ornaments  having  all  been  destroyed,  some  dressed  skin- 
robes  and  rude  altar-trappings  were  provided.  On  Sun- 
days and  holy  days  the  introductory  prayers  were  offered ; 
but  the  consecration  was  omitted.  This  was  called  the 
"  dry  Mass."  Yet  simple  as  was  the  rite  of  baptism,  we 
frequently  read  in  the  frank  relations  of  the  Jesuits  that 
the  savages  refused  to  have  it  performed  on  themselves  and 
their  children,  regarding  it  as  an  evil  charm.  Captain 
Bossu,  of  the  French  Marines,  in  his  Travels  through 
Louisiana  (1759),  says  :  — 

"  I  saw  a  Choctaw  Indian  recently  baptized,  and,  because  he 
afterwards  had  no  luck  in  hunting,  supposed  himself  bewitched, 
and  made  complaint  to  Father  Lefevre,  who  had  converted  and 
initiated  him.  With  angry  excitement,  he  demanded  release  from 
the  enchantment  by  the  annulling  of  the  ceremony.  The  priest 
made  some  show  of  complying  with  the  demand.  The  Indian  soon  — > 
after  killed  a  deer,  which  made  him  very  happy." 

There  were  embarrassments  also  occasionally  met  by  the 
priests  when  they  attempted  to  explain  their  mysteries  to 
an  acute-minded  savage.  We  have  a  graphic  account  of  an 
interview  of  Cortes  and  his  priest  with  Montezuma,  in  the 
effort  to  attempt  his  conversion.  The  barbarian  emperor 
accepted  Cortes's  account  of  the  creation,  as  conformed  to 
his  people's  traditions ;  but  the  abstruse  doctrines  and 
mysteries  of  the  Christian  faith  announced  to  him  baffled 
him.  Especially  was  his  mind  exercised  when  Cortes,  after 
a  sharp  reproach  upon  him  for  human  sacrifices  and  the 
cannibal  eating  of  human  flesh,  undertook  to  explain  to 
him  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation  in  the  holy  wafer  at 
the  Mass.  That,  said  the  emperor,  was  eating  God,  —  a 
far  more  monstrous  act  than  the  eating  of  a  human  being. 

A  Jesuit  Father,  writing  of  a  famous  chief,  Therouet, 
who  died  at  Montreal,  says  he  was  a  true  Christian,  and  as 


MISSIONARY  EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

such  was   buried  with   pomp  and   with  the   rites  of  the 
Church ;  "  for  when  the  passion  of  Christ  crucified  by  the 
s^as  explained  to  him  he  said  to  me, '  Oh  !  had  I  been 
iere,  I  would  have  revenged  his  death  and  brought  away 
their  scalps ! ' : 

A  good  illustration  of  the  perplexity  of  mind  in  an  intel- 
ligent savage,  caused  by  the  proffer  of  religious  instruction 
by  the  various  Christian  sects,  is  found  in  the  calm  judg- 
ment uttered  by  a  high  chief  in  the  Red  River  region. 
Catholics  and  Protestants  had  rival  missions  around  him. 
The  chief  said  to  Father  Derveau,  the  priest :  "  You  tell  us 
there  is  but  one  religion  that  can  save  us,  and  that  you 
have  got  it.  Mr.  Cowley,  the  Protestant  minister,  tells  us 
that  he  has  got  it.  Now,  which  of  you  white  men  am  I  to 
believe?"  After  a  long  pause, —  smoking  his  pipe,  and 
talking  with  his  people,  —  he  turned  round  and  said:  "I 
will  tell  you  the  resolution  I  and  my  people  have  come  to ; 
it  is  this  :  when  you  both  agree,  and  travel  the  same  road, 

*"")    we  will  travel  with  you  ;  till  then,  however,  we  will  adhere 

/     to  our  own  religion  :  we  think  it  the  best." 

L.  Missionaries  had  been  stationed,  Catholic  and  Protestant, 
for  more  than  thirty  years,  twenty-seven  in  number,  within 
the  Red  River  region  of  two  hundred  miles,  at  a  charge 
on  Christian  benevolence  of  £50,000  sterling.  The  judg- 
ment is  that  the  labor  had  been  nearly  fruitless,  the  system 
defective,  the  method  radically  wrong.  The  Hudson  Bay 
agent  and  explorer,  Samuel  Hearne,  in  his  "  Journey  from 
the  Prince  of  Wales's  Fort  to  the  Northern  Ocean,"  in  1771, 
gives  the  following  account  of  his  meeting  with  some 
Copper  River  Indians,  and  of  the  impression  he  made  upon 
them :  — 

"  As  I  was  the  first  Englishman  whom  they  had  ever  seen,  and 
in  all  probability  might  be  the  last,  it  was  curious  to  see  how  they 
flocked  about  me,  and  expressed  as  much  desire  to  examine  me 
from  top  to  toe  as  a  European  naturalist  would  a  nondescript  animal. 
They,  however,  found  and  pronounced  me  to  be  a  perfect  human 


AN   INDIAN   AGNOSTIC.  383 

being,  except  in  the  color  of  my  hair  and  eyes.  The  former,  they 
said,  was  like  the  stained  hair  of  a  buffalo's  tail ;  and  the  latter, 
being  light,  were  like  those  of  a  gull.  The  whiteness  of  my  skin, 
also,  was  in  their  opinion  no  ornament,  as  they  said  it  resembled 
meat  which  had  been  sodden  in  water  till  all  the  blood  was  ex- 
tracted. On  the  whole,  I  was  viewed  as  so  great  a  curiosity  in  this 
part  of  the  world,  that,  during  my  stay  there,  whenever  I  combed 
my  head,  some  or  other  of  them  never  failed  to  ask  for  the  hairs 
that  came  off,  which  they  carefully  wrapped  up,  saying,  '  When  I 
see  you  again  you  shall  again  see  your  hair  ! ' ' 

The  author  adds  the  following  sketch  of  the  character 
and  religion  of  his  guide  to  the  Copper  River,  the  Indian 
chief  Matonabbee,  who,  his  father  dying  when  he  was 
young,  lived  for  many  years  with,  and  was  educated  after 
a  fashion  by,  Governor  Norton,  of  the  Hudson  Bay  service, 
at  Prince  of  Wales's  Fort:  — 

"  It  was  during  this  period  that  he  gained  a  knowledge  of  the 
Christian  faith ;  and  he  always  declared  that  it  was  too  deep  and 
intricate  for  his  comprehension.  Though  he  was  a  perfect  bigot 
with  respect  to  the  arts  and  tricks  of  Indian  jugglers,  yet  he  could 
by  no  means  be  impressed  with  a  belief  of  any  part  of  our  religion, 
nor  of  the  religion  of  the  Southern  Indians,  who  have  as  firm  a 
belief  in  a  future  state  as  any  people  under  the  sun.  He  had  so 
much  natural  good  sense  and  liberality  of  sentiment,  however,  as 
not  to  think  that  he  had  a  right  to  ridicule  any  particular  sect 
on  account  of  their  religious  opinions.  On  the  contrary,  he  de- 
clared that  he  held  them  all  equally  in  esteem,  but  was  determined, 
as  he  came  into  the  world,  so  he  would  go  out  of  it,  without  pro- 
fessing any  religion  at  all.  Notwithstanding  his  aversion  from  re- 
ligion, I  have  met  with  few  Christians  who  possessed  more  good 
moral  qualities,  or  fewer  bad  ones.  It  is  impossible  for  any  man  to 
have  been  more  punctual  in  the  performance  of  a  promise  than  he 
was:  his  scrupulous  adherence  to  truth  and  honesty  would  have 
done  honor  to  the  most  enlightened  and  devout  Christian,  while 
his  benevolence  and  universal  humanity  to  all  the  human  race, 
according  to  his  abilities  and  manner  of  life,  could  not  be  exceeded 
by  the  most  illustrious  personage  now  on  record." 1 

*  P.  349-51. 


384  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE  INDIANS. 

"  He  could  tell  a  better  story  of  our  Saviour's  birth  and  life  than 
one  half  of  those  who  call  themselves  Christians  ;  yet  he  always 
declared  to  me  that  neither  he  nor  any  of  his  countrymen  had  an 
idea  of  a  future  state.  He  was  an  advocate  for  universal  toleration, 
and  I  have  seen  him  several  times  assist  at  some  of  the  most  sacred 
rites  performed  by  the  Southern  (Canada)  Indians,  apparently  with 
as  much  zeal  as  if  he  had  given  as  much  credit  to  them  as  they 
did.  And  with  the  same  liberality  of  sentiment  he  would,  I  am 
persuaded,  have  assisted  at  the  altar  of  a  Christian  Church,  or  in  a 
Jewish  synagogue ;  not  with  a  view  to  reap  any  advantage  himself, 
but  merely,  as  he  observed,  to  assist  others  who  believed  in  such 
ceremonies."  1 

This  interesting  person  kept  eight  wives  in  good  order. 

Let  us  quote  briefly  the  judgment  passed  by  a  missionary 
of  one  Christian  fellowship  upon  his  brethren  of  another 
communion.  The  Roman  Catholic  Bishop  Tache',2  having 
referred  to  the  zeal  with  which  Protestant  missions  had 
been  conducted  in  the  Northwest,  cautiously  qualifies  his 
estimate  thus  :  — 

"  I  say  the  zeal.  The  word  may  surprise,  and  I  may  be  asked 
my  reason  for  using  it.  '  But  have  these  Protestant  ministers  zeal  1 ' 
If  by  zeal  he  meant  that  sweet  and  divine  flame  which  consumes 
all  that  is  merely  human,  that  sacred  fire  which  enwraps  the  heart 
to  the  extent  that  a  man  wholly  forgets  himself  that  he  may  en- 
tirely consecrate  himself  to  the  search,  to  the  preaching,  of  the 
truth,  to  the  sanctification  of  his  fellow-creatures,  I  will  say  with- 
out hesitation,  No !  the  ministers  of  error  have  no  zeal,  and  they 
cannot  have  it.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  for  having  zeal  it  suf- 
fices, for  one  motive  or  another,  to  spend  in  the  service  of  any  cause 
a  vast  amount  of  energy  and  efforts,  alike  for  giving  prevalence  to 
this  cause  and  for  combating  that  which  is  opposed  to  it,  above 
all  that  which  opposes  it  with  the  force  of  repulsion  which  the 
truth  has  against  error,  — then  I  will  say  that  these  men  have  very 
much  of  zeal.  Some  of  them  bring  to  their  ministry  an  ardor,  an 
activity,  sometimes  even  a  devotedness,  certainly  worthy  of  a  better 
cause.  Would  to  Heaven  that  they  had  not  so  much  zeal !  that 

1  P.  344. 

2  In  his  "  Vingt  Annees  de  Missions  dans  le  Nord  Quest  de  I'Amerique." 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC  MISSIONARIES.  385 

the  infinitely  good  God  would  arrest  such  as  these  on  the  way  to 
Damascus  !  that  the  hand  so  gentle  and  so  strong  of  his  infinite  pity 
might  cause  to  fall  from  the  vision  of  their  hearts  the  scales  which 
hinder  their  sight  of  the  true  light,  which  would  thus  make  them 
chosen  vessels  to  preach  to  the  gentiles  the  veritable  gospel  of  the 
grace  of  God." 1 

These  earnest  words,  in  which  one  kind  of  zeal  seems  to 
outrun  any  kind  of  charity,  may  well  introduce  the  second 
section  of  our  large  theme. 

II.  Roman  Catholic  Missionaries  among  the  Indians. — 
We  have  to  recognize  the  fact  that  the  whole  world-wide 
communion  representing  the  Roman  Church  has  found 
vastly  more  encouragement  and  satisfaction  in  its  mission- 
ary work  among  the  Indians  and  elsewhere  than  have  the 
Protestant  folds.  True,  the  Protestants  have  no  secrets 
about  such  matters.  Everything  of  success  or  failure 
becomes  public.  It  may  be  that  in  the  Roman  Church 
discipline  and  authority  suppress  what  it  would  be  dis~ 
couraging  to  divulge,  and  that  we  do  not  know  of  short- 
comings and  failures.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  worthy 
of  emphatic  statement,  that  in  no  one  of  the  voluminous 
and  minute  reports  returned  to  their  superiors  by  the 
priests  is  there  to  be  found  any  confession  of  regret,  of 
disappointment  of  expectation,  of  unrewarded  labor,  —  any 
looking  back  to  easy  and  cheering  fields  from  the  most 
lonely,  gloomy,  and  saddened  wildernesses  of  stern  expo- 
sure, peril,  and  toil.  There  are  no  more  sunny,  hopeful, 
and  grateful  laborers  than  these  hard-tasked  missionaries. 
All  of  them  seemed  to  wear  rose-colored  glasses.  These 
devoted  men,  absolutely  secluded  from  all  the  exciting  and 
engrossing  interests  and  incidents  of  public  and  civilized 
life,  with  no  personal  or  political  ambitions,  no  means  for 
self-indulgence  even  in  listless  idleness,  very  few  mental 
resources  save  in  their  engrossment  upon  the  most  rudi- 

1  Quoted  in  Joseph  James  Margrave's  "  Red  River"  Appendix. 
25 


386  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

mental  exercises,  could  have  no  other  spur  or  solace  than 
what  they  found  in  their  clerical  duties.  The  tedium  of 
life,  in  its  utmost  oppressiveness,  could  be  shaken  off  only 
by  complete  engrossment  in  their  work  and  such  satisfac- 
tion as  its  faithful  discharge  afforded.  Very  rarely  would 
one  or  another  of  the  Jesuits  in  the  forests  indulge  a 
scholarly,  artistic,  or  philosophical  proclivity  which  had 
been  manifested  and  encouraged  in  his  education  as  a 
youth  in  the  seminary.  This  might  enhance  his  enjoy- 
ment of  wild  scenery,  make  him  a  curious  observer  of 
natural  phenomena,  of  botany  or  natural  history,  give  a 
zest  to  his  life  and  converse  with  rude  humanity,  and 
yield  him  solace  in  his  loneliness.  Yet  we  have  from 
the  Jesuit  Fathers,  besides  their  Indian  vocabularies  and 
translations  of  religious  works,  a  few  excellent  narratives 
of  travel  and  adventure,  some  contributions  to  natural 
philosophy  and  history,  and  a  few  able  scientific  works 
written  here.  They  were  contented  —  yes,  even  happy — in 
their  service,  never  complaining,  reluctant,  or  regretful. 

In  the  motives  and  instruments  first  engaged  in  behalf 
of  France,  for  discovery  and  colonization  in  the  New  World, 
there  was  certainly  no  element  of  nobleness  which  exalts 
them  above  or  even  raises  them  to  the  level  of  those  which 
insured  success  to  the  seaboard  English  colonies.  The 
glowing  zeal  and  the  heroic  devotion  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers 
gave  to  one  period  of  the  history  of  New  France  in  Amer- 
ica a  sublime  and  a  tragic  interest,  the  narration  of  which 
will  never  fail  to  engage  the  profoundest  homage  of  the 
appreciative  reader.  But  they  were  not  the  earliest  actors 
in  the  enterprise.  The  fisheries  and  the  fur-trade,  with 
reckless  adventurers,  felons,  and  outlaws,  mingled  with  a 
qualifying  but  not  an  overruling  element  of  men  of  loftier 
motive  and  purpose,  came  first  upon  the  scene  of  New 
France.  In  inaugurating  the  work  of  colonization  in  Aca- 
dia,  De  Monts  brought  thither  a  mixed  company  of  nobles, 
gentlemen,  thieves,  convicts,  and  ruffians.  Champlain,  as 


THE   FIRST   CONVERTS.  887 

voyager,  explorer,  administrator,  and  organizer  of  the  most 
successful  of  the  whole  series  of  undertakings,  fills  the  eye 
with  the  majesty  of  his  form  and  bearing,  and  meets  the 
scrutiny  of  the  keenest  study  of  his  motives  and  of  his 
whole  career.  Poutrincourt  and  his  son  Biencourt,  who  are 
identified  with  the  hopes  and  the  disasters  which  gave  such 
a  checkered  series  of  fortunes  to  Acadia,  win  our  regard 
for  their  persistency  under  sharp  discomfitures.  Catholic 
priests  and  Huguenot  ministers,  as  fellow-passengers,  had 
abundant  time  on  their  long  voyage  for  initiating  the  con- 
tentions to  be  pursued  on  the  virgin  soil.  Poutrincourt 
brought  with  him  to  Port  Royal  a  secular  priest,  La  Fleche, 
who  at  once  set  himself  to  the  work  of  making  Christians 
of  the  natives,  so  far  as  could  be  done  by  baptizing  them. 
A  famous  chief,  named  Membertou,  figures  prominently  in 
the  early  narrative.  He  appears  to  have  been  an  astute 
and  wily  savage,  making  himself  very  pliant  and  service- 
able to  the  adventurers,  and  finding  his  account  in  it.  He 
is  said,  when  he  appears  on  the  scene,  to  have  been  of  the 
age  of  one  hundred  and  ten  years,  and  all  that  time  in  the 
service  of  the  Devil,  —  reckoning  probably  by  the  sum  of 
his  sins,  rather  than  by  the  number  of  seasons  which  had 
toughened  him.  His  end,  however,  satisfied  the  standard 
of  his  priestly  instructors.  La  Fleche  first  took  him  in 
hand,  and  with  all  the  pomp  and  manifestation  which  the 
resources  of  time  and  circumstance  admitted,  baptized  him 
and  his  family  of  twenty-one  members  —  squaws,  children, 
and  grandchildren  —  on  the  shore  of  Port  Royal.  The  his- 
torian Lescarbot  describes  the  scene,  solemnized  by  a  pro- 
cession, the  Te  Deum,  and  a  volley  of  cannon.  The  savage 
group  received  the  names  respectively  of  the  members  of 
the  royal  family,  and  of  some  of  the  high  nobles  of  the 
empire ;  and  the  registry  of  their  baptisms  was  sent  to 
France.  La  Fleche  seemed,  however,  to  have  been  very 
willing,  after  having  in  one  year  diligently  performed  the 
rite  for  more  than  a  hundred  of  such  converts,  to  take  his 


388  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG  THE   INDIANS. 

homeward  voyage  on  the  appearance  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers 
Biard  and  Masse,  who,  as  the  first  of  their  Order  to  set  foot 
in  New  France,  arrived  after  four  months  of  peril  on  the  sea, 
at  an  anchorage  at  Port  Royal,  on  the  feast  of  Pentecost, 
May  22,  1611.  They  both*  wrote  home  their  first  report, 
June  10,  1611.  Their  letters  are  given  in  Carayon's 
"  Premiere  Mission,  etc."  Gilbert  Du  Thet,  the  third  of 
the  Fathers,  joined  his  brethren  in  1612,  and  soon  went 
back ;  but  returned  here  again  the  next  year  with  a  fourth 
missionary,  Du  Qucntin.  Biard  applied  himself  with  great 
zeal  and  industry  to  master  the  language  of  the  savages, 
that  he  might  improve  upon  the  method  of  La  Fleche ;  for 
he  had  resolved  that  while  he  baptized  as  many  infants  as 
possible,  he  would  delay  the  rite  for  adults  till  he  had  of- 
fered them  something  in  the  form  of  Christian  instruction. 
It  seems  that  he  was  sadly  trifled  with  by  a  waggish  or  a 
scoffing  Indian,  upon  whose  aid  he  relied  as  an  interpreter. 
Putting  himself  in  the  place  of  a  pupil  before  his  naked 
and  presumptuous  instructor,  he  received  in  good  faith  the 
Indian  terms  offered  to  him  as  equivalents  for  such  sacred 
words  as  Faith,  Hope,  Charity,  Sacraments,  Baptism,  Eu- 
charist, Trinity,  Incarnation,  etc.  Whether  or  not  the  In- 
dian vocabulary  had  equivalent  terms,  is  a  question  that 
can  hardly  be  raised  to  palliate  the  trick  put  upon  the  good 
Father  by  his  swarthy  teacher,  who  gave  him  as  definitions 
some  of  the  foulest  and  filthiest  words  that  ever  came  from 
the  tongues  of  the  natives.  As  these  were  introduced  by 
the  Father  into  his  catechism,  they  were  of  course  received 
with  shouts  of  derision,  when  he  repeated  them  in  his  teach- 
ings in  the  wigwams.  The  same  trick  was  afterwards 
played  upon  Le  Jeune,  one  of  the  missionaries  to  the 
Hurons,  by  his  Algonquin  teacher,  who,  as  a  famous  sor- 
cerer, was  his  rival.  It  may  deserve  mention  that  the 
Apostle  Eliot  does  not  appear  ever  to  have  been  made 
the  subject  of  such  trifling,  which  would  have  introduced 
foul  blots  into  his  Indian  Bible. 


THE   FRANCISCAN   PKIARS.  389 

The  sachem  Membertou  was  gloried  over  by  Father  Biard 
as  his  first  and  most  eminent  convert,  with  more  confidence 
than  the  Apostle  Eliot  expressed  over  his  own  disciple,  the 
chief  Waban.  A  son  of  Membertou's  had  been  miracu- 
lously raised  from  mortal  sickness  through  the  help,  says 
the  Jesuit,  "  of  a  bone  of  the  precious  relics  of  the  glorious 
St.  Lawrence,  Archbishop  of  Dublin,  which  M.  de  la  Place, 
the  worthy  Abbot  of  Eu,  and  the  Priors  and  Chapter,  had 
graciously  given  to  us  to  convoy  our  voyage."  This  bone, 
laid  on  with  a  vow,  restored  the  sufferer.  "  Membertou," 
says  the  Father,  "  was  the  greatest,  most  renowned,  and 
redoubtable  savage  in  the  memory  of  man ;  of  noble  frame, 
tall  and  muscular,  and  bearded  like  a  Frenchman.  He  bade 
us  hasten  to  learn  his  language,  in  order  that,  as  soon  as  we 
had  mastered  it  and  had  thus  been  able  to  teach  him  the 
faith,  he  might  become  a  preacher  like  ourselves.  He  was 
the  first  of  all  the  savages  in  these  regions  who  had  re- 
ceived the  first  and  the  last  sacrament,  —  baptism  and  ex- 
treme unction;  the  first  who  of  his  own  will  and  direction 
received  Christian  burial."  Membertou  proposed  an  im- 
provement in  the  Lord's  Prayer.  He  did  not  like  the  limi- 
tation in  the  petition  to  "  daily  bread,"  and  wished  to 
include  "  moose-meat  and  fish*"  1 

In  1615  the  noble  Champlaiii  made  another  resolute  at- 
tempt to  plant  a  colony  at  Quebec.  Profoundly  religious, 
though  not  an  implicit  instrument  of  the  Jesuits,  he  brought 
with  him  four  Franciscan  Friars,  of  the  Order  of  the  Recol- 
lets,  and  two  more  soon  followed.  They  were  faithful  and 
devoted  men,  heroic  and  all-enduring  in  their  zeal  and  sacri- 
fices, and  they  nobly  began  the  missions  among  the  distant 
Hurons,  though  soon  surrendering  the  stern  service  to  the 
Jesuits,  whose  fervid  toil  and  more  than  apostolic  warfare 
with  Nature  and  heathendom  promised  for  a  brief  season  a 

1 1  am  indebted  to  the  studies  and  the  references  of  Mr.  Parkraan,  in  his 
"  Pioneers,"  etc.,  for  my  principal  information  and  guidance  to  authorities,  in 
this  brief  notice  of  the  first  Roman  Catholic  missions  in  Acadia. 


390  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

glorious  triumph,  to  be  shrouded  in  the  most  dismal  and 
appalling  disaster.  The  Recollets,  as  before  stated,  cele- 
brated the  first  Mass  within  the  territory  of  Canada. 

By  the  request,  or  at  least  by  the  consent,  of  the  Friars, 
three  Jesuit  Fathers,  the  first  of  their  Order  in  Canada, 
came  to  undertake  the  mission  there  in  1625.  This  was 
fourteen  years  after  their  brethren,  Biard  and  Masse,  had 
come  to  Acadia.  Two  more  Fathers  joined  them  in  1626. 
Up  to  this  time  Huguenots  had  been  free  to  share  in  the 
enterprise  of  colonization  in  New  France,  but  after  1627 
the  privilege  was  rigidly  restricted  to  Catholics.  The  brief 
episode  of  the  English  possession  of  Canada,  on  its  seizure 
by  Kirk,  threatened  to  thwart  the  whole  project  of  the 
French  missions.  But  the  field  was  restored  to  the  original 
adventurers  in  1632.  The  Recollets  then  resigned  their 
honorable  and  peaceful  beginnings  in  a  consecrated  work ; 
two  more  Jesuits  joined  those  already  in  their  forest  sanc- 
tuaries, and  thenceforward  the  record  of  endeavor  and  en- 
durance, of  constancy  and  patience,  of  single-hearted  zeal 
and  of  martyrdom,  protracted  through  long  years  of  misery, 
pain,  and  all  mortal  extremities,  is  written  under  the  title 
of  "  The  Jesuit  Missions  in  New  France."  1 

The  heroism  of  piety  and  zeal,  certified  by  absolute  self- 
renunciation  and  consecrated  fidelity  to  vows  and  obliga- 
tions, finds  its  loftiest  and  consummate  examples  in  the 
world's  whole  annals  of  holy  purpose  and  endeavor  in  the 
work  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  in  New  France.  Protestantism, 
in  none  of  its  forms  or  sects,  has  a  match  for  them.  No 
preferences,  prejudgments,  animosities,  or  entailed  antipa- 

1  Mr.  Parkman  devotes  one  of  the  volumes  in  his  series  upon  his  grand 
theme,  so  ably  wrought  by  him,  to  the  subject  of  "The  Jesuits  in  North 
America  in  the  Seventeenth  Century."  The  volume,  in  its  narration  of  events, 
its  delineation  of  scenes,  its  condensed  summaries  of  incidents  and  experiences, 
and  in  its  generous  appreciation  of  the  characters  and  work  of  heroic  men  act- 
ing under  the  inspiration  of  high  motives,  is  all  the  more  faithful  to  its  pur- 
pose because  the  author's  respect  and  sympathies  go  with  the  sincerity  of  the 
men  rather  than  with  the  methods  of  their  mission. 


THE  TRAINING  OF  THE  JESUITS.  391 

thies  of  our  own ;  no  conclusions  or  convictions,  however 
intelligently  and  dispassionately  drawn  from  the  fullest 
and  most  candid  study  of  the  distracted  pages  of  contro- 
versy and  rivalry  among  those  who  are  called  Christians, — 
can  bid  us  deny  or  grudge  to  those  intrepid  soldiers  of  the 
cross  of  Christ  (the  Jesuit  Fathers)  the  meed  of  our  reve- 
rential homage  and  admiration.  Their  vows  were  the  stern- 
est in  their  severity  and  exactions,  and  those  who  took 
them  intensified  that  severity  in  the  self-testing  of  their 
own  fidelity  to  them.  Their  pupilage  and  training  in  dis- 
cipleship  decided  the  constancy  of  their  apostleship.  The 
appalling  contrast  between  the  scenes  and  the  spheres  to 
which  many  of  the  most  devoted  of  them  were  born  —  in 
palace  and  chateau,  and  for  the  life  of  court  gayety  and 
intrigue — and  the  scenes  and  companionship  of  their  soli- 
tary toil  in  dreary  wildernesses  of  savages  and  peril,  is  a 
symbol  of  their  characters  and  their  work. 

Trained  in  the  rigid  discipline  of  the  seminary,  under 
the  keen,  soul-penetrating  search  of  his  spiritual  director, 
to  an  entire  self-disclosure  and  an  absolute  self-surrender 
in  abnegation  and  obedience,  the  pupil  yielded  his  whole 
being,  thought,  purpose,  will,  and  inclination  to  the  control 
of  his  superior.  No  searching  tests  or  methods  of  the 
alembic  or  crucible  so  thoroughly  expose  the  elemental 
constituents  of  the  ore  or  the  vapor  as  did  that  soul-search 
open  to  all  the  secrets  of  the  inner  being  of  the  novitiate. 
And  on  the  knowledge  thus  reached  was  planted  the  au- 
thority of  the  superior  or  director.  This  absolute  author- 
ity was  not  exercised  by  caprice  or  wilfulness,  nor  with 
any  partiality  or  favoritism,  but  it  was  conscientious  and 
discriminating ;  for  the  director  was  under  the  same  con- 
straint of  subjection  in  vow  as  was  imposed  upon  his 
scholar.  By  that  knowledge  of  the  make  and  fibre  of  the 
soul  of  his  pupil,  his  aptitude,  his  strength  or  feebleness 
of  tone,  and  his  special  fitness  for  a  special  work,  the  di- 
rector assigned  his  place  and  service.  Sometimes  these 


392  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS  AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

accorded  with,  sometimes  they  crossed,  what  we  should 
have  called  the  longings  and  preferences  of  his  pupil, 
save  that  no  such  inclinations  were  longer  to  be  felt  in 
his  subjugated  and  enthralled  personality. 

And  there  was  a  stage  at  the  entrance  on  his  mission 
work,  and  at  every  crisis  of  danger  and  endeavor  in  it,  when 
the  Jesuit,  no  longer  a  novice,  found  his  highest  joy  in  add- 
ing, of  his  own  free  choice,  to  his  pledged  vows.  He  could 
select  his  own  patron  among  the  glorified  and  beatified 
saints.  In  his  ecstatic  devotions  his  kindled  eye  would  have 
visions  of  their  shining  hosts,  and  the  fervor  of  his  zeal  and 
his  hidden  energies  of  patience  would  be  quickened  in  the 
deep  calm  of  his  unfaltering  trust.  In  the  hour  of  mortal 
peril,  as  at  every  crisis  of  his  lot,  in  the  preparation  for 
each  missionary  enterprise,  and  when  the  direst  fate  of  his 
wilderness  exposure  was  impending  over  him  in  starva- 
tion, in  freezing  cold,  or  from  savage  malignity,  he  would 
make  a  solemn  contract  by  special  vow  with  the  Holy 
Mother  or  his  heavenly  Patron.  The  tranquillity,  the  re- 
solve, and  the  unflinching  steadfastness  which  then  pos- 
sessed him  came  as  a  fond  assurance  that  the  unseen  con- 
tracting party  in  the  skies  had  listened  to  his  vow,  ratified, 
and  recorded  it.  The  deepest,  dearest  longing  of  the  good 
Father's  soul  was  for  the  palm  of  martyrdom.  His  other- 
wise joyless  life  transferred  all  pleasure  arid  benediction 
thitherward.  To  yield  his  spirit  in  the  sweet  rewarding 
service  of  Holy  Church,  the  blessed  Saviour,  the  Virgin, 
and  the  saints,  by  suffering,  torture,  or  mortal  extremity, 
was  to  him  the  consummation  of  bliss.  But  there  was  a 
condition,  a  stern  one ;  and  this  faithful  conscience  did  not 
grudge  or  shrink  from  it.  That  crowning  glory  of  martyr- 
dom was  to  come  in  the  path  of  simple  duty,  as  a  necessity 
and  a  boon,  —  not  self-sought  and  won,  not  by  rash  daring, 
or  running  unadvised  into  peril.  The  least  courting  of 
avertible  risks  on  his  way  to  death  would  deprive  him  of 
the  coveted  palm. 


THE   JESUIT  "RELATIONS."  393 

So  we  follow  these  heroic  pioneers  of  the  Cross  deep  and 
far  into  their  mission  stations  of  the  wilderness,  which  they 
were  the  first  of  white  men  to  penetrate.  They  would  go 
alone  if  so  it  were  best ;  they  asked  no  companionship  for 
their  own  safety  or  cheer.  To  one  obligation  which  kept 
them  in  converse  with  the  world  they  had  parted  with 
they  were  ever  considerately  faithful.  Once  in  a  year  at 
least,  if  by  any  possibility  it  could  be  effected,  it  was  their 
duty  to  send  from  their  lonely  posts  a  report  of  the  work  of 
their  missions.  Many  a  birchen  skiff,  paddled  by  an  Indian 
through  the  calm  or  fretted  waters  of  our  lakes  and  rivers, 
has  for  centuries  borne  to  Quebec  or  Montreal  these  Jesuit 
"  Relations  "  for  transmission  across  the  water  to  the  Supe- 
riors of  the  Order.  Blindly  did  the  Indian  courier  marvel 
over  the  mystery  of  the  packet  with  which  he  was  intrusted, 
and  which  he  was  bid  to  guard  as  the  choicest  portion  of 
his  trading  freight.  Written  often  on  birch  bark,  with 
charcoal  and  grease,  or  with  the  juice  of  some  wild  sap  or 
berry,  these  Relations  told  many  a  story  of  dire  extremity, 
of  dauntless  courage,  and  occasionally  of  exultant  joy  over 
some  gleaming  success.  Truthful,  candid,  and  full  of  a 
sweet  and  gentle  placidity  of  spirit  are  those  wilderness 
missives.  One,  two,  three,  even  more  years  did  the  soli- 
tary apostle  pursue  his  strange  toil  among  fickle  and  ca- 
pricious disciples  without  the  sight  of  a  white  man.  To 
soothe  and  soften  their  savage  breasts,  to  save  their  doomed 
souls  from  a  fate  worse  than  the  torturings  which  they  in- 
flicted on  their  victims,  and  to  impart  just  so  much  of  the 
teaching  of  the  most  elementary  instruction  in  the  faith 
as  would  justify  the  giving  of  Christian  baptism,  —  this 
was  his  task.  An  Indian  infant  just  passing  out  of  life 
needed  only  the  water-drop,  moistening  the  sign  of  the 
cross,  to  rescue  his  soul  for  bliss.  When  the  jealous  sav- 
ages, visited  with  contagious  diseases  or  plagues,  turned 
fiercely  on  the  priest  who  was  so  eager  to  perform  the  rite, 
and  charged  him  with  sorcery  or  magic  wrought  for  their  de- 


394  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

struction,  it  would  seem  as  if  only  special  help  from  heaven 
could  protect  him.  Thus,  destitute  of  what  we  call  the 
necessaries  of  life,  even  without  salt ;  clinging  only  to  their 
simple  altar  furniture  ;  patching  their  black  robes,  worn  to 
shreds,  with  hides  and  skins ;  making  a  common  home  in 
what  Roger  Williams  well  calls  "  the  filthy,  smoky  holes  " 
of  the  natives  ;  eating  their  loathsome  diet,  sharing  their 
indecencies  and  vermin,  and  supporting  life  in  wilderness 
exigencies  on  berries,  roots,  and  even  their  own  moccasons 
and  apparel ;  tramping  through  the  forests  on  snow-shoes, 
through  oozy  swamps  and  bogs ;  paddling  the  unstable  ca- 
noe, and  bearing  without  a  murmur  or  regret  the  most 
dreaded  privations  and  risks,  —  these  Jesuit  Fathers,  the 
crusaders  of  New  France,  performed  their  missions.  Right- 
fully have  many  of  them  left  their  enshrined  names  on  riv- 
ers, bays,  capes,  and  estuaries,  through  all  our  north  and 
west,  festooned  in  wreaths  of  admiring  homage,  as  the 
regions  which  they  opened  to  the  light  once  were  with  the 
vines  and  mosses  of  the  primeval  forest. 

The  method  of  life  pursued  by  the  Jesuit  Fathers  in  their 
missionary  labors  among  the  natives  was  substantially  as 
follows  :  In  some  instances,  in  promising  fields  and  with  a 
considerable  tribe  of  Indians,  there  would  be  resident  two 
or  more  of  the  Fathers.  In  more  cases,  however,  each  was 
alone,  a  single  man,  isolated  from  his  fellows  and  from 
civilization,  in  a  remote  station,  with  infrequent  intercourse 
with  the  world  beyond  him.  Occasionally  the  Father  would 
have,  under  the  title  of  a  donne,  a  young  lay  assistant, 
equally  devoted  with  himself  to  his  holy  work,  and  able 
and  willing  to  render  him  a  variety  of  services,  —  menial, 
functionary,  and  official,  —  helping  in  the  work  of  interpre- 
tation, of  translation,  and  the  instruction  and  oversight  of 
catechumens.  Many  instances  there  were  of  constancy, 
devotion,  and  patient  suffering  of  these  lay  brethren.  As 
a  general  thing,  the  missionary  conformed  to  the  mode  of 
life  of  the  savages, — sharing  their  viands,  and  bearing  their 


THE  JESUIT  IN  RESIDENCE.  395 

hardships  in  common ;  always  on  the  route  content  with 
their  foul,  smoky,  and  vermin-infested  lodgings  ;  sleeping 
on  boughs  or  skins,  or  on  the  bare  earth,  with  pestiferous 
odors,  and  children  and  dogs  crawling  over  him.  He  never 
attempted  to  carry  with  him  the  luxuries  of  life,  leaving 
them  all  behind  him.  We  read  of  one  of  them  who  had 
contrived,  through  all  the  perils  of  canoe  navigation  and  of 
trampings  by  the  portages  round  the  cataracts,  to  transport 
into  the  far  wilderness  a  clock.  The  wondering  savages 
would  come  into  his  cabin  to  hear  it  strike  the  hours,  appa- 
rently at  the  command  of  the  missionary.  Indispensable 
to  him  as  his  own  luggage,  however,  were  the  materials 
and  paraphernalia  of  altar  furniture  for  the  daily  celebra- 
tion of  the  mass  and  for  festival  occasions  :  his  own  robes, 
a  little  wine  and  wheat  for  the  sacrament,  rosaries,  cruci- 
fixes, bells,  and  pictures,  —  if  possible,  a  robed  and  painted 
image  of  the  Virgin  Mary  or  a  saint,  and  writing  materials. 
For  a  year  at  least  he  could  expect  no  replenishing.  His 
severest  deprivation  was  when  he  could  not  obtain  a  few 
grains  of  wheat  or  a  drop  or  two  of  the  juice  of  the  grape 
for  the  sacrament.  One  of  the  Fathers,  after  leaving 
Quebec  with  a  few  Indians  for  *the  Huron  wilderness,  was 
sadly  discomfited  when  an  Indian,  on  the  first  night's  en- 
campment on  the  Isle  of  Orleans,  became  crazily  drunk, 
having  purloined  and  consumed  the  contents  of  a  little  keg 
of  wine,  the  year's  supply  of  the  missionary. 

As  soon  as  possible,  on  taking  up  residence  in  an  In- 
dian village,  the  missionary  would  construct  a  simple  log 
or  bark  chapel,  rough  and  rustic,  surmounted  with  a  cross. 
A  large  central  cross  would  also  be  planted  in  or  near  the 
settlement.  Either  in  connection  with  or  beside  the  chapel 
he  would  provide  a  rude  cabin  for  himself,  with  two  apart- 
ments, —  one  of  which  he  reserved  for  strict  privacy,  the 
other  accessible  for  a  wonderful  variety  of  business  with 
the  Indians.  The  daily  altar  offices,  which  indeed  were 
seldom  omitted  even  on  the  wilderness  tramp,  were  at  once 


396  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE  INDIANS. 

regularly  established  in  the  village.  The  savages  were 
engaged  by  eye  and  sense  before  it  was  possible  to  reach 
their  minds  by  any  lessons.  Heroic,  resolute,  and  unflag- 
ging was  the  zeal  of  the  missionary  to  master  the  language 
of  his  disciples,  as  teaching  them  his  own  or  that  of  the 
Church  was  out  of  the  question.  He  would  select  one  of 
the  most  intelligent  as  his  interpreter  and  instructor  in  his 
cabin.  He  would  —  as  soon  as  he  could  venture  to  do  so 
—  make  a  vocabulary,  and  put  his  sacred  formulas  into  the 
native  tongue.  Instances  have  been  already  mentioned 
in  which  roguish  tricks  were  played  upon  the  confiding 
missionary,  odious  and  filthy  terms  being  given  to  him  in 
Indian  as  the  equivalents  of  sacred  words. 

The  station  would  be  put  under  the  name  of  a  saint  of 
the  Church  calendar,  and  be  committed  to  his  or  her  pat- 
ronage. Sooner  or  later  a  miracle  of  mercy  or  help  would 
attest  that  the  pledge  was  recognized  from  above.  There 
was  never  the  slightest  faltering  in  the  mind  of  the  Jesuit 
as  to  which  incidents,  events,  and  agencies  he  should  assign 
to  the  saint,  and  which  to  the  Devil.  The  division  was 
generally  an  equal  one.  The  daily  routine  of  life  in  the 
lulls  from  the  war  or  hunting  excitements  found  all  the 
natives  gathered  in  early  morning  about  the  cross,  or  in 
the  chapel,  attending  upon  the  Mass,  and  so  towards  eve- 
ning on  Vespers.  Hours  of  the  day  were  assigned  for 
instruction.  In  every  case  the  missionary  was  zealous  to 
baptize  every  infant  within  his  reach,  especially  those  who 
were  dangerously  ill.  The  missionary  meant  to  be  scrupu- 
lous—  we  can  hardly  say  cautious  —  about  performing  this 
saving  rite  for  adults.  Some  instruction,  with  a  generous 
and  easy  conviction  that  it  was  understood,  must  precede. 
The  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Ten  Commandments,  the  Apostles' 
Creed,  a  simple  catechism,  and  a  few  hortatory  words  on 
the  divine  authority  of  the  Church  were  the  medium  of 
full  conversion. 

The  Fathers,  alike  from  preference  and  from  policy,  ven- 


JESUIT  INSTRUCTIONS.  397 

tured  to  abstain  as  far  as  possible  from  confusing  the  minds 
of  the  savages  with  abstract  instruction,  with  arguments  or 
explanations.  The  savages  assented  most  readily  to  propo- 
sitions which  they  least  understood.  Implicit  trust  and 
obedience  were  what  was  required  of  them,  and,  within  a 
limited  range,  yielded.  Especially  were  the  Fathers  — 
quite  unlike  all  Protestant  missionaries  in  this  respect  — 
very  careful  not  to  interfere  with  the  habits,  the  modes  of 
life,  the  inclinations,  the  superstitions  even,  of  the  savages, 
beyond  what  was  absolutely  indispensable  for  their  pur- 
poses. They  did  not  aim  to  civilize  the  savages,  to  confine 
them  to  industrious  toils  and  handicrafts,  to  limit  their 
roaming  life,  to  meddle  with  their  usages,  to  change  their 
relations  to  their  chiefs  and  warriors,  or  to  restrain  their 
warlike  ferocity,  or  absolutely  to  forbid  polygamy.  In 
their  earlier  residence  and  work  among  the  savages  the 
Jesuits  found  their  wisdom,  patience,  and  efforts  suffi- 
ciently tasked  in  securing  their  own  footing,  in  having 
their  presence  tolerated  among  a  wild,  suspicious,  and 
capricious  set  of  stolid  and  superstitious  barbarians.  At 
times  they  needed  to  practise  extreme  caution,  to  show  no 
fear,  to  temporize  and  endure,  but  never  to  yield,  give  over 
effort,  or  run  away.  The  jealous  savages,  forming  but  the 
faintest  conception  of  the  real  object,  the  wholly  unselfish 
and  consecrated  aim,  of  the  missionary,  would  imagine  all 
evil  of  him.  On  occasions  of  plagues  or  prevailing  diseases, 
many  an  evil  eye  would  be  turned  upon  the  Jesuit;  the 
knife  or  tomahawk  would  be*  threateningly  brandished,  on 
the  dark,  dread  suspicion  that  he  had  artfully  introduced 
the  malady  and  was  working  hellish  charms  upon  them. 
The  missionary,  thwarted  and  threatened,  stood  firm  and 
unquailing.  He  was  perfectly  willing,  he  would  have  been 
triumphantly  happy,  to  die  as  a  martyr  ;  but  if  in  haste,  or 
lack  of  prudence,  or  heat  of  zeal  he  in  any  way  provoked 
or  facilitated  death,  or  failed  to  use  every  human  effort 
to  avert  it,  he  lost  the  glorious  palm. 


398  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

We  meet  with  frequent  and  very  candid  admissions  in 
the  relations  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers,  that  the  most  formi- 
dable opposition  which  they  encountered  in  their  mission 
work  came  from  the  medicine-men,  the  magicians,  sorcer- 
ers, and  medical  practitioners  among  the  Indians.  The 
Jesuits  regarded  these  priestly  physicians  as  diabolical 
agents,  and  of  course  were  viewed  in  their  turn  as  rivals 
in  the  same  evil  ministry.  Working  on  the  fear  and  super- 
stitions of  the  Indians  when  under  a  cloud  or  ill,  these 
medicine-men,  partly  through  their  own  craft  and  partly 
by  the  credulity  of  the  people,  were  invested  with  a  super- 
natural character.  Yet  the  element  of  fraud  in  their 
pretensions  and  practices  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
so  predominant  but  that  they  may  have  been  the  dupes 
of  their  own  ignorance  and  delusion.  It  was,  however,  a 
matter  of  first  importance  with  the  Jesuits  to  win  over, 
dissuade,  and  convert  these  medicine-men,  and  failing  in 
that  effort,  to  expose  their  pretences  and  incompetency. 
This  was  always  a  difficult,  and  often  a  critical  and  dan- 
gerous undertaking,  disturbing  the  traditional  belief  and 
usages  of  the  wild  men  inherited  from  generations.  The 
Jesuits  were  occasionally  cautious  in  dealing  with  this 
perilous  mischief;  but  they  faithfully  met  the  risk,  and 
calmly  or  boldly  defied  the  impostors,  as  they  regarded 
them. 

Nor  is  it  at  all  strange  that  the  good  Fathers  them- 
selves, as  they  candidly  tell  us,  were  often  regarded  by 
jealous  and  hard-hearted  savages  as  sorcerers  and  magi- 
cians. It  was  altogether  natural  that  it  should  have  been 
so.  Arrayed  in  their  long  robes,  surplices,  and  other  vest- 
ments which  had  a  magical  look,  with  their  backs  to  the 
people,  with  frequent  changes  of  attitude  and  posture,  genu- 
flections and  crossings,  they  were  seen  to  be  handling  the 
altar  furniture,  putting  something  into  their  mouths, — not 
enough  for  real  sustenance, — and  muttering  some  unintelli- 
gible sounds  which  might  be  charms.  This  ritual  service  of 


THE   SUCCESS  OF  THE   JESUITS.  399 

the  Mass  was  a  profound  mystery  in  its  show  and  emblems 
to  the  lookers-on.  Then  there  were  occasions  of  prevail- 
ing disease  among  children,  the  parents  dismayed  as  to 
the  cause.  The  Jesuits  asking  permission  to  baptize  a 
dying  infant,  and  being  sternly  forbidden  as  if  it  were  an 
evil  charm,  'were  occasionally  observed  performing  the 
rite  by  stealth.  The  savages  having  no  answering  con- 
ception in  their  minds  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  act  would 
be  infuriated,  and  would  regard  the  priest  as  a  sorcerer 
of  the  most  malicious  kind. 

All  the  more  should  we  hold  ourselves  to  the  loftiest  ap- 
preciation of  the  sincerity,  the  devotion,  the  heroic  fidelity 
of  those  Jesuit  Fathers,  because,  whether  it  be  from  our 
Protestant  prejudices  or  perverseness,  or  with  good  reasons 
for  our  judgment,  we  put  so  slight  an  estimate  upon  the 
results  reached  by  all  this  holy  endeavor.  Those  who  did 
that  work  felt  that  it  was  blessed  and  rewarded.  Buffeted 
and  thwarted  as  they  were,  they  kept  their  serenity  of 
spirit,  and  reported  with  modest  assurance,  that  had  no 
quality  of  boasting,  a  success  which  made  them  happy 
at  heart.  They  tell  by  thousands  the  number  of  their 
converts,  and  do  not  hesitate  to  call  them  Christians  here, 
and  to  claim  for  them  the  heaven  of  the  redeemed.  There 
is  something  of  an  almost  languishing  tenderness,  of  even 
a  maudlin  sentiment,  in  the  fond  relations  of  the  docility 
and  the  simple  reliance  of  their  converts  as  creatures 
of  an  Arcadian  paradise.  Shrewder  and  keener  observers 
of  the  Indian  character  have  told  us  with  what  facility 
and  responsiveness  an  astute  savage  will  assent  to  any  ab- 
stract proposition  or  any  assertion  beyond  the  scope  of  his 
thinking ;  that  this  assent  was  all  the  readier  and  more 
beaming,  the  less  the  proposition  made  was  understood. 
Very  hospitable  is  the  savage  to  the  incomprehensible  in 
words  and  ideas.  He  is  a  natural  transcendentalist. 

But  this  assent  of  his  wild  catechumen  was  to  the  good 
Father  conviction  and  faith,  at  times  even  the  effect  of 


400  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

supernatural  grace.  It  would  be  unreasonable  in  us, 
using  our  tests  and  standards,  to  affirm  that  the  Jesuit 
Fathers  made  no  attempt  to  impart  to  their  wild  con- 
verts those  Christian  ideas,  sentiments,  motives,  which  go 
to  the  roots  of  one's  being,  work  the  great  inner  conver- 
sion, and  build  up  character,  renewed  and  vitalized.  The 
Jesuits  attempted  what  is  in  our  view  the  utterly  futile 
task  of  Christianizing  without  civilizing  the  savages.  The 
fundamental  difference  between  their  aim  with  what  they 
regarded  as  their  success  in  it,  and  those  of  every  Pro- 
testant communion  in  their  missions  among  the  Indians, 
is  this:  The  Jesuits  can  make  their  discipleship  accord 
with  the  habits,  the  life,  the  mental  range,  the  moral  lax- 
ness,  the  forest  license  of  those  who  are  still  barbarians ; 
the  Protestant  missionaries  are  primarily  teachers,  re- 
formers, civilizers,  requiring  of  their  disciples  industry, 
toil,  humanity,  restraint  of  passion,  radical  changes  in  all 
their  views  and  customs  of  living. 

The  champion  and  eulogist  of  the  members  of  the  Society 
of  Jesus  might  well  find  his  account,  in  a  polemical  or  his- 
toric essay,  in  pleading,  that,  for  the  purpose  of  claiming 
for  them  a  just  and  kindly  estimate,  he  would  isolate  one 
single  company  of  them  in  one  single  field  of  their  effort 
and  devotion,  and  try  and  test  the  spirit  of  their  Order  in 
aim  and  motive  and  method  there.  Leaving  all  the  tangled 
and  irritating  questions  concerning  their  intermeddlings, 
intrigues,  and  complications  with  court  policy  and  secular 
ambitions  and  strifes,  he  would  study  them  as  remote  from 
scenes  where  these  angry  feuds  and  soiling  schemes  have 
place,  and  as  engaged  simply  and  purely  in  their  mission 
work.  Such  a  restricted  field  and  such  a  selected  fellow- 
ship of  Christian  evangelists  might  well  be  claimed  to  pre- 
sent themselves  within  the  range  of  our  present  subject. 
The  Jesuit  missionaries  in  New  France  came  as  near  to 
such  isolation  from  the  reputed  motives  and  methods  of 
their  Order,  as  the  organic  and  vital  rule  of  it  would  under 


DEVOTION  OP  THE  JESUITS.  401 

any  circumstances  admit.  Of  course  the  vow  of  obedi- 
ence, the  rigid  bond  of  discipline,  the  subjection  to  direc- 
tions from  a  superior,  the  bounden  duty  of  self-reckoning 
and  of  detailed  reports,  and  the  animating  soul  of  the  com- 
pany which  enthralled  all  separate,  abnegated  wills,  as  if 
unified  by  one  inspiring  and  directing  volition, — these  were 
ties  and  sentient  chords  which  distance  and  loneliness  only 
quickened  and  intensified.  Martyrdom,  uninvited,  but  vent- 
ured and  longed  for,  if  it  could  be  met  in  the  path  of  patient, 
courageous  duty,  was  the  all-coveted  reward ;  but  it  could 
crown  the  sacrifice  only  of  a  consecrated  and  pledged  life. 
But  early  in  the  mission  life  in  Canada  we  begin  to  meet 
interminglings  of  motive  for  the  extended  dominion  of 
France,  for  anticipated  collisions  with  heretics,  and  for  the 
gains  of  trade  and  power.  Still,  allowing  for  all  these  lim- 
itations and  qualifications  of  the  perfect  zeal  exclusively 
and  thoroughly  religious,  coming  later  into  the  mixed 
motives  of  the  missionaries,  the  palm  of  pre-eminent  self- 
consecration  in  a  service  than  which  none  more  severely 
exacting  was  performed  on  this  earth  by  man  for  man,  was 
nobly  won  by  them.  Whatever  repelling  and  odious  asso- 
ciations of  subtle  intrigue,  sinuous  policy,  and  artful  casu- 
istry the  word  Jesuit  has  gathered  around  it,  from  courts, 
confessionals,  and  the  directorship  of  female  consciences, 
it  surely  parted  with  them  in  the  depths  of  the  Huron  wil- 
derness. There  was  no  occasion  or  material  for  such  things 
there.  Had  the  Jesuits  not  entered  upon  their  work  with  a 
single  consecrated  aim,  they  would  have  been  held  to  its 
sole  regard  in  the  American  forests. 

In  our  European  histories,  biographies,  and  court  and 
police  records  we  meet  with  the  wily  and  plotting  Jesuit 
disguised  as  soldier,  sailor,  courtier,  travelling  merchant, 
day-laborer,  Protestant  preacher  even.  It  may  be  that  as 
in  the  case  of  many  who  have  achieved  an  ill  repute,  includ- 
ing even  the  Evil  One  himself,  they  have  incurred  the  odium 
of  mischief  which  they  never  did.  But  the  Jesuit  put  on 

26 


402  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

no  disguises  here.  The  insignia  of  his  order  and  profession, 
clung  to  in  all  extremities  and  hazards,  were  the  only  out- 
ward badges  of  his  pride.  His  glorious  privilege  to  the 
investiture,  marking  him  as  one  of  a  pledged  company  who 
were  facing  the  perils  of  all  climes  on  their  missions,  was  a 
compensation  for  all  the  inconvenience  and  risks  of  such 
a  garb.  For,  indeed,  alike  in  the  wilderness  tramp  and  in 
the  frail  canoe  by  lake  or  river,  the  long,  closely-fitted  cas- 
sock, which  secured  for  the  wearer  the  Indian  title  of  the 
"  Black  Robe,"  was  the  least  convenient  form  of  apparel. 
This,  with  the  wide-brimmed,  flopped  hat,  the  cross,  and 
the  rosary,  were  the  badges  of  his  profession,  inviting  respect 
from  friends  and  pledging  constancy  in  the  presence  of  foes. 
For  two,  three,  and  even  more  years,  hundreds  of  leagues 
within  wildernesses  in  the  region  between  the  Gulf  of  St. 
Lawrence  and  Lake  Superior,  remote  from  all  converse  or 
succor  from  European  colonists,  the  Jesuit  would  wear  this 
garb  by  day  and  night,  in  the  wigwam  and  along  the  route, 
and  even  in  its  tatters  he  would  preserve  its  semblance 
with  patches  of  bark  and  skin. 

The  discipline  of  the  novitiate,  in  the  seminary  and  under 
the  sway  of  an  astute  and  thoroughly  skilled  director  of 
conscience,  had  subjugated  and  enthralled  the  individual 
will,  the  conscience,  the  mastering  motives,  of  the  candi- 
date for  membership  of  the  Order.  Obedience,  unquestioned 
and  unreasoned,  to  his  superior,  was  the  complement  and 
sum  of  all  his  virtues.  To  do  what  was  assigned  to  him, 
to  go  where  he  was  sent,  to  report  himself  only  as  in  the 
way  of  his  duty,  to  raise  no  alternatives  of  preference  or 
prudence,  never  to  forecast  consequences,  to  measure  risks, 
or  turn  aside  from  peril  or  death,  —  such  were  his  vows. 
His  calling  was  from  outside  of  this  world ;  and  therefore 
the  powers  of  this  world,  in  motive,  fear,  or  reward,  were 
not  to  be  recognized  by  him.  His  record  and  reckoning 
were  for  the  world  to  come.  What  was  signified  to  the 
Jesuit  by  the  term  faith,  either  as  the  matter  or  »the  way 


TRAGIC   FATE   OP  MISSIONARIES.  403 

of  belief,  may  seem  to  us  like  the  weakest  credulity  and 
the  most  puerile  superstition.  To  him  it  was  peace,  pa- 
tience, fortitude,  courage,  gentleness,  and  a  victory  over  all 
physical  longings  and  all  mortal  dreads.  Nothing  that  we 
call,  in  these  days,  emancipation  of  the  reason,  intelligence, 
strength  of  mind,  scientific  vigor,  or  discernment  of  truth, 
has  ever  wrought  with  such  a  potent  and  unyielding  sway 
over  the  inward  essence  and  the  outward  conduct  of  a  hu- 
man being  as  has  the  faith  of  a  Jesuit.  The  courage  of  the 
soldier,  the  dauiitlessness  of  the  hero,  are  but  fragments  of 
the  sum  of  his  prowess  and  self-mastery.  Even  the  mira- 
cles which  the  Jesuit  believed  were  wrought  for  him  by  St. 
Joseph  and  the  Virgin  were  really  less  marvellous  than 
the  effects  produced  in  himself  by  his  faith  in  them.  His 
great  exemplar  in  remote  and  perilous  missionary  endur- 
ance, St.  Francis  Xavier,  rather  than  his  soldier-founder 
Loyola,  was  the  model  and  inspirer  of  the  height  and  ful- 
ness and  measure  of  his  zeal.  His  life  among  the  savages 
was  but  a  series  of  exhausting  hardships,  vexations,  anxie- 
ties, discomfitures,  ever-impending  fatalities,  changing  dis- 
appointments and  ultimate  failures ;  and  death  came  to 
most  of  the  Fathers  in  a  series  of  variations  of  the  sombre 
tragedy  of  humanity.  Father  Le  Jeune  wrote  from  Quebec 
to  his  Provincial :  "  The  chastity  of  our  temperament  must 
be  altogether  angelic."  Father  Brebeuf  wrote  from  St. 
Joseph  to  his  General,  in  Rome :  "  That  which  above  all 
things  is  demanded  in  laborers  destined  for  this  mission  is 
an  unfailing  sweetness  and  a  patience  thoroughly  tested. 
It  is  neither  by  force  nor  by  authority  that  one  can  hope  to 
gain  our  savages."  Father  Jogues,  the  lamb  and  the  lion 
of  the  missions,  found  in  the  stroke  of  the  hatchet  which 
ended  his  work  a  mild  release  from  all  the  ingenuities  of 
savage  torture.  Father  de  None,  at  the  age  of  sixty-three, 
was  frozen  into  ice  in  the  attitude  of  prayer  in  February, 
1646,  on  the  shore  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  having  lost  his  way 
in  the  snow  while  on  a  lonely  errand  of  kindness.  A 


404  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

French  noble,  and  once  a  court-page,  he  had  lived  in  the 
wilderness  twenty-one  years.  Father  Masse,  after  thirty- 
five  years  of  service,  died  the  same  year  of  hardships  in 
it,  at  the  age  of  seventy-two,  at  Sillery.  Father  Daniel, 
twenty  years  in  the  Society,  pierced  with  arrows  and  balls, 
was  flung,  in  1648,  into  the  burning  ruins  of  his  chapel 
at  St.  Joseph's,  at  the  age  of  forty-eight.  The  sturdy- 
framed  and  the  lion-hearted  Father  Brebeuf,  of  the  race 
of  the  English  Earls  of  Arundel,  founder  of  the  Huron 
Mission,  in  the  twenty-fifth  year  of  his  service,  came  to  a 
martyr's  death,  March  16,  1649.  He  bore  unflinchingly 
the  extremities  and  barbarities  of  the  tortures  which  all  the 
revolting  ingenuity  of  his  tormentors  could  devise.  They 
drank  his  blood,  that  it  might  transfuse  into  their  veins  his 
intrepid  heroism,  while  their  chief  devoured  his  heart.  His 
skull,  in  a  silver  bust  of  him  sent  from  France,  is  pre- 
served as  a  holy  relic  at  Quebec.  His  companion,  Father 
Jerome  Lalemant,  met  a  similar  fate  on  the  next  day.  He 
had  been  in  the  country  less  than  three  years,  and  was 
thirty-nine  years  of  age.  Physically  he  had  the  weakness 
and  delicacy  of  a  woman,  but  he  had  the  soul  of  a  hero. 
Father  Chabanel,  in  his  seventh  year  of  service,  to  which 
he  had  bound  himself  for  life  by  a  solemn  vow,  was  mur- 
dered by  a  renegade  Huron  catechist,  Dec.  8, 1649.  Father 
Gamier  after  thirteen  years  of  mission  life,  yielded  it  un- 
der gunshot  and  the  hatchet,  while  administering  the  last 
offices  to  his  disciples  slaughtered  in  a  ferocious  assault  of 
the  Iroquois.  He  also  was  of  noble  blood  and  gentle  nur- 
ture. His  beardless  face,  after  he  was  thirty  years  old, 
made  him  an  object  of  ridicule  in  Paris,  but  it  added  a 
grace  to  him  for  the  eye  of  the  Indian.  Father  Buteux 
was  waylaid  and  killed,  in  1652,  while  on  a  most  arduous 
and  perilous  journey,  with  one  companion,  from  Three 
Rivers,  in  a  mission  to  the  distant  Algonquin  nation  of  the 
White  Fish.  Father  Marquette,  in  May,  1675,  died  at  the 
age  of  thirty-eight,  as  he  had  wished  that  he  might  die,  on 


JESUIT  MISSION  STATIONS.  405 

the  bare  earth  of  the  deep  inner  wilderness,  with  two  hum- 
ble attendants  carrying  his  worn  and  sinking  frame  to  the 
spot  where  he  was  to  find  release.  There  he  consecrated 
the  holy  water  for  his  last  needs,  and  instructed  his  rude 
nurses  how  to  keep  the  crucifix,  which  he  took  from  under 
his  robe,  before  his  closing  eyes ;  how  to  prompt  his  closing 
lips,  in  his  last  agony,  with  the  words  Jesus  and  Mary ; 
how  to  compose  his  lifeless  form  for  burial,  and  then  to 
raise  the  cross  over  his  grave  at  the  spot  which  he  indi- 
cated, at  the  mouth  of  the  river  that  now  bears  his  name. 

Of  the  five  Recollets  who  had  begun  the  Canada  mis- 
sion, one,  Nicholas  Viel,  was  killed  in  1625.  The  others,  as 
above  stated,  returned.  Of  the  twenty-five  Jesuit  mission- 
aries to  the  Hurons  recorded  by  Father  Martin  in  his  "  Re- 
lation Abrege*e,"  seven  were  killed,  one  was  frozen  to  death, 
one  died  of  his  wounds,  eight  died  in  service,  and  eight  re- 
turned to  France  after  the  catastrophe  which  overwhelmed 
the  Huron  mission  in  the  direful  fate  of  the  nation.  Their 
field  extended  over  the  region  between  the  Gulf  of  St. 
Lawrence  and  Lake  Superior. 

A  lively  sketch  of  the  inner  life  and  the  daily  work  of  the 
Jesuits  in  one  of  their  remote  residences  will  be  found  in 
the  following,  translated  from  Carayon,  from  a  letter  of  Fa- 
ther Francis  Du  Peron,  at  La  Conception,  among, the  Hurons, 
April  27, 1639,  to  his  brother  Joseph,  a  Jesuit  in  France : 

"...  We  are  lodged  and  we  live  after  the  manner  of  the  sav- 
ages ;  we  have  no  ground  for  cultivation  except  a  little  borrowed 
patch  where  we  raise  French  wheat  merely  sufficient  for  the  host 
for  the  Mass.  We  leave  the  rest  to  divine  Providence,  who  sup- 
plies us  with  more  of  Indian  corn  than  if  we  had  the  best  fields : 
one  will  bring  us  three  ears  of  corn,  another  six ;  one  a  pumpkin ; 
one  will  give  us  a  fish,  another  bread  baked  in  the  ashes.  We  live 
happily  and  content  with  our  lot.  For  their  presents  we  return 
little  glass  ornaments,  rings,  awls,  and  knives.  This  is  all  our 
money.  Of  the  good  things  of  France  we  have  none  here;  the 
ordinary  sauce  of  our  viands  is  pure  water,  and  for  gravy,  corn  or 
pumpkins.  The  luxuries  which  come  from  France  do  not  get  up 


406  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

beyond  Three  Elvers.  All  that  we  can  transport  farther  are  some 
church  ornaments,  wine  for  the  Mass  (of  which  we  use  only  four 
or  five  drops  in  the  cup),  and  some  vestments,  with  a  few  prunes 
and  raisins  for  the  sick,  everything  being  at  great  risk  on  the  way. 
We  have  lost  this  year  two  of  our  packages.  Our  platters,  though 
of  wood,  cost  more  than  do  yours,  their  worth  being  that  of  a 
beaver  skin,  —  that  is,  a  hundred  francs. 

"  The  kingdom  of  God  makes  a  grand  advance  in  these  countries. 
We  have  here  a  foreign  nation  of  refugees,  in  part  from  their  ene- 
mies the  Iroquois,  as  also  because  of  a  pestilence  which  had  been 
very  fatal  among  them.  Nearly  all  of  them  are  baptized  before 
they  die.  I  have  baptized  some  of  them,  and  the  Fathers  have  no 
small  task,  morning  and  evening,  in  visiting  and  instructing  the 
poor  sick  ones  who  seem  to  have  escaped  a  cruel  death  from  their 
enemies  only  to  meet  the  happy  end  of  the  elect.  I  leave  you  to 
judge  if  it  be  not  a  great  consolation  to  those  who  give  their  prayers 
and  their  toils  to  the  conversion  of  these  poor  souls,  that  God  is 
willing  to  save  them  if  we,  on  our  part,  offer  no  hindrance  to  it. 
I  ask  and  implore  for  this  end  the  assistance  of  the  prayers  of 
your  Eeverence  and  of  my  acquaintance.  I  salute  them  all  with  a 
heart  of  affection  ;  I  believe  they  will  not  fail  me. 

"  Here,  now,  is  a  little  journal  since  my  arrival.  Having  fortu- 
nately reached  the  land  of  the  Hurons  after  a  journey  of  twenty- 
six  days  in  a  canoe,  or  rather  a  bark  cradle  of  a  birch  tree,  on 
September  29,  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  being  put  in 
the  way  of  reaching  one  of  our  residences  in  season  to  celebrate 
the  Mass  on  that  day,  the  rain  and  the  exhaustion  caused  by  the 
preceding  journey,  in  which  we  were  on  the  water  from  one  o'clock 
in  the  morning  till  after  midnight,  without  a  chance  to  rest,  and 
induced,  by  the  hope  of  being  able  to  say  Mass,  to  eat  nothing 
after  my  landing,  the  rain  and  the  fatigue,  and  also  the  distance  of 
the  place,  —  five  or  six  leagues,  —  and  ignorance  of  the  paths,  con- 
strained me  to  stop  at  the  first  village  and  to  take  some  little  nour- 
ishment. I  then  entered  the  cabin  of  a  chief  of  the  settlement ;  they 
passed  me  the  compliment  of  a  cliay  (welcome)  in  their  language, 
the  ordinary  salute  as  '  good  day,'  and  immediately  spread  a  mat  on 
the  earth  for  me  to  lie  upon,  and  then  took  four  ears  of  corn  which 
they  roasted  and  presented  to  me,  as  also  two  pumpkins  roasted  in 
the  ashes,  and  a  platter  of  sagamy.  I  assure  your  Reverence  that 
this  was  delicious  food  to  me.  The  little  children  and  others  gath- 


JOURNAL  OF  A   JESUIT.  407 

ered  in  the  cabin  with  wonder  at  looking  at  me.  Ignorance  of 
their  language  kept  me  dumb,  and  their  habit  of  saying  nothing 
but  the  word  of  welcome  to  a  stranger  made  them  also  mute ;  only 
they  scanned  me  from  head  to  foot,  and  all  of  them  wanted  to  try 
on  my  shoes  and  my  hat,  each  of  them  putting  the  hat  on  his  head 
and  the  shoes  on  his  feet.  After  having  remunerated  my  host  for 
his  welcome  and  kind  treatment  with  a  knife  and  an  awl,  I  asked 
him  to  provide  me  a  savage  to  carry  my  sack  and  to  conduct  me  to 
one  of  our  residences.  He  brought  me  to  the  Fathers'  by  six  in 
the  evening.  They  received  me  with  all  love  and  affection,  though 
my  entertainment  was  no  better  than  that  of  the  savage,  for  the 
good  things  of  life  are  common  to  us  and  the  natives  :  that  is,  a 
porridge  of  Indian  corn  and  water,  morning  and  evening ;  for  drink 
a  draught  of  icy  water,  the  savages  sometimes  scattering  some  ashes 
in  the  sagamy  for  seasoning,  arid  at  other  times  a  sprinkling  of 
water.  These  are  like  the  cakes  of  the  Provence,  for  grand  occasions 
and  festivals.  The  most  thoughtful  of  them,  after  the  fishing  sea- 
son, reserve  some  fish  to  mix  with  the  sagamy  for  the  rest  of  the 
year.  For  fourteen  persons  they  put  in  about  half  of  a  large  carp, 
and  the  more  rotten  the  fish  is  the  better  it  serves.  As  for  drink, 
it  is  hardly  to  be  named,  the  sagamy  serving  for  solid  and  liquid, 
as  one  may  be  six  months  without  drinking,  except  on  a  journey. 

"The  importunity  of  the  savages  who  continually  infest  our 
cabin,  and  sometimes  push  open  the  door,  throwing  stones  into  it 
and  hitting  us,  compels  us  to  have  as  strict  rules  for  our  hours  as  in 
the  French  colleges.  At  four  o'clock  the  bell  rouses  us  ;  after  our 
devotions  comes  the  Mass,  till  eight  o'clock,  during  which  we  have 
an  interval  of  silence,  reading  a  spiritual  book  and  saying  the  Small 
Hours.  At  eight  we  open  the  door  for  the  savages  till  four  in  the 
afternoon,  during  which  time  we  allow  them  free  converse,  alike  for 
their  instruction  and  that  we  may  learn  their  language.  The  Fathers 
also,  during  this  time,  go  out  to  visit  in  the  cabins  of  the  settlement 
to  baptize  the  sick  and  to  instruct  those  who  are  well.  For  me,  my 
occupation  is  the  study  of  the  language,  guarding  the  cabin,  praying 
for  the  converts  and  the  catechumens,  and  keeping  school  for  the 
children  from  noon  till  two  o'clock.  At  two  we  are  summoned  to 
examination  of  conscience ;  then  comes  dinner,  at  which  a  chapter 
in  the  Bible  is  read,  and  often  the  Philagie  of  Jesus,  by  the  Eev. 
Father  du  Barry.  We  have  the  blessing  and  the  grace  in  Huron 
for  the  sake  of  the  savages  who  may  be  present  at  the  time.  We 


408  MISSIONARY  -EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

dine  seated  on  stools  round  the  fire,  with  our  platters  on  the  ground. 
At  noon  I  begin  the  school  for  the  children,  which  lasts  two  hours. 
Sometimes  I  have  but  two  or  three  scholars.  Sundays,  Tuesdays, 
and  Thursdays  the  school  closes  at  one  o'clock,  at  which  time  we 
teach  the  most  notable  of  the  settlement,  whether  Christians  or 
not ;  on  Thursdays  only  the  Christians  and  catechumens  ;  Sunday 
morning  the  Christians  only.  At  the  public  Mass  there  is  a  sermon  ; 
before  the  Mass  the  holy  water  is  consecrated  with  singing,  and  at 
the  offertory  the  sacred  bread  is  distributed  among  the  savages.  On 
the  great  feasts  we  have  singing  and  the  Mass.  After  dinner  on 
Sunday,  at  one  o'clock,  we  chant  the  Vespers ;  then  comes  instruc- 
tion of  Christians  and  catechumens.  At  five  we  chant  the  Com- 
pline, and  Saturday  evening  the  Salve  with  the  Litanies  of  the  Vir- 
gin. On  the  same  day,  at  the  close  of  the  school,  there  is  a  little 
catechising  of  the  children  ;  and  during  the  month  there  is  a  pub- 
lic catechising  for  the  whole  settlement,  besides  the  daily  instruc- 
tion which  is  given  in  their  cabins.  At  four  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon we  exclude  the  savages,  and  say  in  quiet  together  our  matins 
and  lauds,  at  the  end  of  which  we  consult  for  three  quarters  of  an 
hour  on  the  progress  or  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  faith  in 
these  regions;  then  we  study  the  language  in  conference,  till 
supper  time,  which  is  at  half-past  six;  at  eight  we  have  the  Lit- 
anies and  the  examination  of  conscience,  and  then  to  bed.  We 
have  here  no  whole  night's  repose  as  in  France.  All  the  Fathers 
and  our  domestics,  except  one  or  two,  myself  being  one,  rise  four 
or  five  times  each  night,  as  the  fashion  of  resting  here  is  on  a  mat 
with  all  your  clothes  on.  Since  I  came  from  France  I  have  never 
taken  off  my  cassock  except  to  change  my  underclothing.  Thank 
God !  I  have  found  no  inconvenience  in  it,  and  I.  daily  realize  how 
little  will  satisfy  nature  ;  and  I  believe  that  we  are  subjects  rather 
for  envy  than  compassion.  For  ourselves  we  do  not  envy  the  con- 
dition of  any  one  in  our  France,  —  '  Better  is  a  day  in  Thy  courts 
than  a  thousand,'  etc.  It  is  true  that  we  have  the  reality,  as  you 
do,  only  in  a  picture.  How  precious  is  the  gift  of  the  Faith  !  "We 
have  to  deal  with  a  people  which  has  been  wholly  enslaved  to  the 
Devil  ever  since  the  deluge." 

In  a  manuscript  letter  of  Father  Gamier,  to  a  friend  in 
France,  copied  by  Mr.  Parkman,  we  have  a  confidential 
disclosure  which  shows  a  shrewd  conception  of  the  means 


JESUIT   ALTAR   ORNAMENTS.  409 

most  apt  to  work  effectively  on  the  imagination  of  an  In- 
dian. In  specifying  articles  needed  for  the  mission,  the 
writer  asks  for  "  a  picture  of  Christ  without  a  beard,"  the 
Indians  disliking  that  appendage.  Several  Virgins  are  de- 
sired, as  also  several  representations  of  dmes  damnees,  to 
show  variety  and  intensity  in  the  forms  of  their  torments 
through  an  ingenious  arrangement  of  demons,  dragons, 
and  flames.  One  happy  or  beatified  soul  will  suffice  in 
that  kind.  The  pictures  must  not  be  in  profile,  but  in  full 
face,  looking  squarely  with  open  eyes  at  the  beholder ;  and 
all  in  bright  colors,  without  flowers  or  animals,  which  only 
distract.  Some  of  the  missionaries  who  lived  within  reach 
of  the  bayberry  soon  learned  to  boil  its  fruit,  and,  mixing 
the  product  with  animal  fat,  to  supply  themselves  abun- 
dantly with  good  candles.  The  wild  grape  afforded  them 
wine  for  the  sacrament ;  the  rosary  was  found  a  very  ser- 
viceable help ;  the  cross  always  and  everywhere  held  its 
place  of  veneration.  Images  and  devices  on  tin  and  pewter 
came  to  be  coveted  rewards.  A  yellow  calico  dress  formed 
a  change  in  the  wardrobe  of  the  Virgin.  Father  Ralle  had 
trained  forty  young  Indians  to  assist  at  the  Mass,  in  chants, 
and  processions. 

In  a  letter  to  his  nephew  *  he  writes  :  — 

"  I  have  built  a  church  which  is  well  arranged  and  richly 
adorned.  I  have  believed  that  I  ought  to  grudge  nothing,  either 
in  its  decoration,  or  in  the  beauty  of  its  ornaments  which  adapt  it 
for  our  holy  ceremonies ;  trimmings,  chasubles,  copes,  sacred  ves- 
sels, everything  is  becoming  there,  and  would  so  be  regarded  in  our 
European  churches.  I  have,  provided  a  little  clergy  of  about  forty 
young  savages,  who  assist  in  divine  service  in  cassocks  and  sur- 
plices ;  they  have  their  several  functions,  as  well  for  serving  at  the 
holy  sacrifice  of  the  Mass  as  for  chanting  the  divine  office,  for  the 
benediction  of  the  Holy  Sacrament,  and  for  the  processions  which 
are  made  before  a  grand  concourse  of  savages,  who  often  come  from 
a  great  distance  to  see  them.  You  would  be  edified  with  the  perfect 
order  which  they  keep,  and  by  the  piety  which  they  manifest."  . 
1  Lettres  Edifiantes  et  Curieuses. 


410  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

He  says  that  he  had  also  planted  two  chapels  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  village ;  one  on  the  way  to  the  fields,  the  other 
on  the  edge  of  the  forest.  These  were  dedicated  respec- 
tively to  the  Virgin,  with  her  image  in  relief,  and  to  the 
Guardian  Angel.  The  Indian  women  rivalled  each  other 
in  lavishing  upon  these  chapels  all  their  trinkets  and  finery. 

In  the  "  Relation  "  of  Father  Jacques  Bigot,  from  the  Sil- 
lery  Mission  of  St.  Francis  de  Sales,  in  1684,  we  read  the 
following :  — 

"  On  the  29th  of  January  we  dressed  anew  an  Altar  much  more 
richly  ornamented  than  the  previous  one.  The  Reverend  Father 
Superior  of  all  our  missions  in  Canada  had  given  the  most  beauti- 
ful ornament  of  this  Altar,  which  was  a  very  large  image  of  St. 
Francis  de  Sales  upon  satin.  I  had  enriched  it  with  a  border  of 
gold  and  silver.  I  verily  say  that  I  never  saw  in  France  a  more 
beautiful  image  of  the  Saint,  nor  more  enriched  than  this.  Indeed, 
to  speak  freely,  I  had  scruples  as  to  the  expense  we  had  incurred 
for  this  when  we  were  so  poor  that  we  had  not  even  the  necessaries 
of  life  for  our  mission,  not  even  for  the  most  miserable.  But  my 
scruples  did  not  last  long,  judging  that  on  so  important  an  occasion 
as  this  we  ought  to  spare  everything  to  insure  the  utmost  efficacy 
to  implant  sentiments  of  piety  in  these  poor  savages  whom  we  wish 
to  win  to  Jesus  Christ.  Our  image,  thus  ornamented,  was  set  upon 
a  little  satin  carpet  with  a  fringe  of  gold  and  silver.  This  carpet 
was  put  on  the  top  of  the  Altar  of  the  Saint,  and  showed  the  im- 
age in  its  whole  size.  At  the  base  of  the  image  was  a  splendid 
circlet  of  china,  ornamented  with  porcupine  quills,  which  our  sav- 
ages," etc. 

Without  these  altar  furnishings  the  Jesuit  was  as  a 
workman  without  materials  or  tools.  Father  Le  Jeune, 
in  the  "  Relation "  for  1637,  writes :  — 

"The  heretics  are  greatly  blamable  for  condemning  and  de- 
stroying images,  which  admit  of  such  good  uses.  These  holy  repre- 
sentations are  half  of  the  instruction  which  one  is  able  to  impart  to 
savages.  I  had  applied  for  some  representations  of  hell,  and  of  a 
damned  soul,  and  there  were  sent  to  me  some  on  paper ;  but  they 
were  too  confused.  The  devils  are  mixed  in  with  men  in  such  a 


TRAINING  OF  INDIAN  NEOPHYTES.  411 

way  that  one  cannot  get  at  any  meaning  without  a  very  sharp 
study.  If  one  would  paint  three,  four,  or  five  devils  tormenting 
one  soul  with  divers  agonies,  —  one  applying  fire,  another  serpents, 
another  red-hot  pincers,  and  another  holding  him  bound  with 
chains,  —  it  would  have  a  fine  effect,  especially  if  the  whole  were 
distinctly  shown,  and  rage  and  misery  should  appear  on  the  features 
of  this  damned  soul." 

The  good  priest  does  not  seem  to  have  remembered  that 
his  Indians  had  often  seen  and  taken  part  in  the  reality  of 
which  he  desired  a  painting.  If,  instead  of  teaching  the 
savages  that  the  Great  Father  of  the  human  race  imitated 
them  in  the  infliction  of  torture,  what  would  have  been  the 
effect  upon  them  of  a  picture  of  the  benedictive  Saviour, 
the  Great  Physician,  standing  in  a  group  of  sufferers 
by  every  ill  and  woe,  who  received  from  him  relief  and 
blessing  ? 

How  in  contrast  with  all  this  was  the  stark  realism  of 
the  Puritan  meeting-house  and  worship,  without  altar, 
painting,  symbol,  or  ritual ! 

If  space  permitted,  I  might  introduce  here  a  sketch  of 
the  noble  and  tragic  ministry  and  career  of  Father  Jogues, 
a  young  Jesuit  scholar,  who  arrived  at  Quebec  in  1636,  and 
went  among  the  Iroquois.  The  narrative  of  his  zeal  and 
fidelity,  of  his  sufferings  and  mutilations,  of  his  escape 
from  a  long  captivity,  of  his  reconsecration  to  his  work, 
and  of  his  final  martyrdom,  is  so  thrilling,  so  wrought  in 
with  marvels  of  heroism  and  endurance,  as  well  as  with 
variety  of  picturesque  and  shifting  scenes,  that  it  might 
be  called  a  romance,  if  it  were  not  for  its  fearfully  sombre 
cast  and  close. 

So  also  is  the  narrative  of  Father  Bressani,  an  Italian 
Jesuit,  who  in  1642  was  put  upon  desperate  service  as  a 
missionary  among  the  Hurons.  No  hero  ever  did  nobler 
work,  in  trial  and  endurance.  Captured  by  the  Iroquois, 
he  was  tortured  and  mutilated,  but,  escaping  with  life, 
returned  to  his  work  till  the  scenes  of  missionary  labor 


412  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS  AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

among  the  Hurons  were  reduced  to  a  desolation.  Some 
extracts  from  his  narrative  will  present  us  the  most  instruc- 
tive reports  and  descriptions  of  the  missionary  work  of  the 
Jesuits  :  — 

"  Bressani1  gives  us  an  approximation  to  the  results  of  the  Jesuit 
Huron  missions  after  some  sixteen  years.  '  I  will  say  only,  in  one 
word,  that  the  number  of  our  neophytes  would  have  heen  much 
more  considerable,  and  that  we  should  in  a  short  time  have  made 
the  whole  country  Christian,  if  we  had  had  regard  only  for  num- 
bers and  the  name.  But  we  had  been  unwilling  to  receive  a  single 
adult  in  perfect  health  before  We  had  got  their  language,  and  had 
subjected  to  long  trial,  sometimes  protracted  through  years,  their 
pious  resolution  to  receive  baptism  and  to  be  faithful  to  the  law 
of  God,  which  called  them  often  to  grievous  difficulties.  We  sought 
to  augment  the  joy  of  heaven  rather  than  to  multiply  Christians  in 
name,  and  we  should  have  incurred  a  sharp  reproach  if  any  one 
among  us  had  deserved  to  have  it  said  of  him,  "  Thou  hast  in- 
creased the  people,  but  hast  not  increased  the  joy."  So  that  in  the 
space  of  a  few  years  we  have  baptized  about  twelve  thousand  sav- 
ages, tof  whom  the  greater  part  are  now  —  as  we  are  confident  —  in 
heaven,  because  of  their  sublime  fervor  and  their  admirable  con- 
stancy in  the  faith.  We  had  predicted  the  eclipse  of  the  30th 
January,  1646,  which  began  here  an  hour  and  a  quarter  before 
midnight.  Our  Christians  were  on  the  watch  ;  so  that  when  it 
occurred  one  of  the  more  fervent,  consulting  only  his  zeal,  ran  to 
rouse  some  of  the  savages.  "Come,"  said  he,  "see  how  worthy 
our  missionaries  are  of  our  confidence,  and  hesitate  no  longer  to 
believe  the  truth  which  they  preach."  A  good  old  man,  a  fervent 
Christian,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  answer  of  the  King  St.  Louis, 
on  the  subject  of  the  miracle  of  the  holy  sacrament,  said  with  much 
shrewdness,  "  that  those  who  doubted  the  truth  of  the  faith  went 
to  see  the  eclipse.  They  have  no  other  evidence  than  that  of  their 
sight ;  our  faith  has  better  proofs."  Some  of  our  neophytes 
have  visited  the  colony  of  the  European  heretics.  When  they 
understood  that  they  were  reproached  for  making  the  sign  of  the 
cross,  and  for  wearing  the  beads  round  their  necks,  not  only  were 
they  undisturbed  by  it,  but  they  themselves  took  these  heretics  to 
task  for  their  irreligion,  with  a  liberty  truly  Christian.  Some  of 
1  Memoir  of  Father  Bressani,  by  Father  Martin. 


CONFERENCE   BETWEEN  JESUIT  AND  INDIAN.  413 

them  having  seen  that  the  colonists  in  New  Sweden  had  but  little 
reserve  with  the  women,  had  no  difficulty  in  preaching  to  Euro- 
peans the  virtue  which  these  should  have  been  the  first  to  have 
inculcated  on  them.  The  struggle  against  their  temptations  has 
been  the  occasion  of  many  heroic  acts.  We  have  more  than  once 
seen  the  neophytes,  after  the  example  of  the  saints,  throw  them- 
selves into  the  snow  in  the  severest  rigors  of  the  winter,  to  cool  the 
ardor  of  their  concupiscence,  or  repressing  it  by  the  flames,  as  if  in 
view  of  the  pains  of  the  life  to  come.  How  many  young  girls  have 
preferred  death  to  the  loss  of  their  honor !  How  many  savages 
have  openly  espoused  the  faith,  in  spite  of  their  fellows,  and  have 
willingly  offered  blood  and  life  to  defend  it !  I  am  convinced  that 
one  would  have  found  among  them  many  martyrs,  if  he  had  dared 
to  persecute  them.  The  grace  of  God  produces  everywhere  the 
same  effects.  It  can  transform  stones,  and  make  of  them  children 
of  Israel.' 

'"  Some  persons  have  had  a  pious  curiosity  to  know  the  arguments 
which  serve  for  the  conversion  of  the  savages.  We  put  foremost 
the  grounds  of  credibility  generally  given  by  theologians.  Those 
which  are  the  most  effective  may  be  reduced  to  three.  The  first 
is  the  accordance  of  our  law  and  of  the  commandments  of  God  with 
the  light  of  reason.  There  is  nothing  forbidden  by  the  faith  which 
is  not  equally  so  by  reason,  and  nothing  commanded  or  allowed  by 
the  faith  which  reason  does  not  also  approve.  Thus,  the  first  of 
our  Christians,  in  asking  for  baptism,  made  this  avowal  to  Father 
Brebeuf :  "  I  have  meant  for  three  years  to  speak  to  you  of  the 
faith  taught  by  this  man  endowed  with  an  excellent  judgment; 
and  as  you  have  been  preaching  I  have  silently  said  to  myself,  '  He 
speaks  the  truth.'  Since  the  first  day,  I  have  begun  to  put  in 
practice  what  you  have  taught  me."  In  this  view,  our  savages  are 
indeed  much  superior  in  intelligence  and  constancy  to  the  people 
of  the  East,  of  whom  our  Indian  apostle,  St.  Francis  Xavier,  drew 
so  sad  a  representation  in  his  letters.  They  yield  readily  to  reason. 
My  second  argument  was  drawn  from  the  written  monuments, — 
not  only  Holy  Scripture,  but  also  the  works  of  men ;  and  with  this 
argument  we  shut  the  mouths  of  their  false  prophets,  or  rather 
charlatans.  They  have  among  them  neither  books  nor  writings, 
as  we  have  said.  When  they  recount  their  fables  about  the  crea- 
tion of  the  world,  about  the  deluge  (of  which  they  have  a  cc-nfused. 
idea),  and  about  the  land  of  souls,  we  ask  them,  "  Who  told  you 


414  MISSIONARY    EFFORTS   AMONG  THE   INDIANS. 

that?"  They  answer,  "  Our  elders."  We  reply,  "But  your  an- 
cients were  men  like  yourselves.  They  could  deceive  themselves 
as  well  as  you,  who  in  your  relations  so  often  mix  up  exaggeration, 
deceit,  and  falsehood.  How  then  can  I  believe  you  with  confi- 
dence ? "  This  argument  cuts  them  keenly.  They  are  bombastic  in 
their  tales.  They  make  up  fables,  and  have  no  hesitation  about 
lying.  We  follow  up  the  argument  thus  :  As  for  us,  we  carry  with 
us  irrefutable  witnesses  for  that  which  we  teach,  —  namely  Scripture, 
which  is  the  word  of  God,  and  which  cannot  falsify.  Scripture 
does  not  change  like  the  speech  of  men,  which  is  a  deceiver  almost 
by  nature.  After  having  admired  the  excellence  of  the  material 
Scripture  (which  we  are  not  wont  to  appreciate,  because  of  famili- 
arity), they  come  to  recognize  the  certainty  of  the  divine  word, 
which  we  show  them  contained  in  the  holy  books  dictated  by  the 
Lord  himself.  We  read  them  the  promises,  the  commandments, 
the  threatenings ;  and  often  the  simple  and  artless  recital  of  the 
judgments  of  God  and  the  pains  of  hell  prepared  for  the  guilty  stirs 
them  with  a  fear  and  terror  like  that  which  we  read  of  as  taking 
hold  of  the  unjust  judge  Felix. 

" '  But  the  strongest  argument  was  that  which  we  drew  from  our 
case  after  the  example  of  the  great  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  With- 
out prejudice  to  his  profound  humility  he  recounted  to  his  disciples 
at  Corinth,  but  in  the  third  person,  not  only  his  sufferings  and  the 
labors  which  he  had  undertaken  in  the  service  of  his  Master,  but 
also  the  revelations  and  the  marvellous  gifts  which  he  had  received 
from  them  who  had  sent  him  to  preach  his  holy  gospel.  We  did 
not  scruple  to  use  this  language  to  our  savages :  — 

"You  see  us  here,  Brothers,  among  you,  languishing  rather  than 
living,  in  ashes  and  smoke,  half-naked,  pierced  with  cold,  dying  of 
hunger  and  wretchedness.  Remember  now  that  we  were  born  and 
educated  in  a  country  where  all  things  abound.  There  we  did  not 
have  for  a  bed,  as  here,  a  rough  bark  or  a  coarse  plank,  but  a  bed 
of  soft  fleece.  Salt  was  not  the  only  seasoning  of  our  food,  but 
there  was  so  great  a  difference  between  ours  and  yours  that  those 
who  were  nearly  famished  among  us  would  not  touch  their  lips  to 
what  you  eat.  Our  houses  were  not  dark  and  filled  with  smoke, 
like  your  cabins,  but  large,  commodious,  and  light.  Ask  your  people 
who  have  visited  the  French  at  Kebec  [Quebec]  the  difference  there 
is  between  their  way  of  life  and  yours,  and  if  it  be  possible  to  com- 
pare the  blessings  they  enjoy  with  your  miseries.  And  still  they 


JESUIT  ARGUMENTS  IN   INSTRUCTION.  415 

have  many  deprivations  so  far  from  their  rich  country.  Draw  your 
own  inference,  then.  If  these  men  are  wise,  as  you  believe,  they 
must  have  some  motive  for  so  great  a  change  of  their  abode ;  they 
must  have  set  for  themselves  some  design.  You  love  dearly  your 
own  country,  parents,  and  friends,  and  we  ourselves  are  neither 
marble  nor  stone.  We  also  love  ours,  and  perhaps  with  more  reason 
than  you,  who  cannot  expect  of  them  such  great  and  good  services. 
Still,  we  have  willingly  left  all ;  we  have  said  adieu  to  happy 
Europe;  we  have  trusted  ourselves  to  a  cruel  and  perfidious  ele- 
ment instead  of  fearing  it.  For  every  one  dreads  those  rafts  by 
which  we  cross  the  seas.  A  spark  in  the  powder  makes  it  fly  into 
destruction ;  the  winds  rend  the  sails  to  tatters ;  the  waters  threaten 
to  engulf  them  ;  the  shoals  of  sand  and  the  hidden  reefs  wreck 
them.  In  fine,  to  reach  your  shores — that  is,  your  dismal  deserts 
— at  the  risk  of  meeting  the  burning  piles  of  your  enraged  enemies, 
we  have  braved  a  thousand  tempests,  a  thousand  shipwrecks,  a 
thousand  accidents,  without  fear  even  of  the  pirates  who  day  and 
night  sweep  the  wide  seas.  Can  we  do  all  this  without  motives 
inducing  us  1 

"  Some  of  us  among  you  have  been  subjected  to  the  torments  of 
the  Iroquois,  and  have  been  obliged  to  return  to  Europe  for  the  cure 
of  mutilations.  Still,  after  such  fearful  sufferings,  our  parents  and 
friends  have  not  been  able  to  prevail  upon  us  to  remain  with  them 
even  for  a  few  months,  as  we  regard  it  a  solemn  duty  to  return  to 
these  forests.  Should  we  consent  to  this  without  grave  and  press- 
ing reasons  1 

11  Nor  are  you  ignorant  that  we  have  never  sought  to  gain  what 
you  value  most,  or  to  secure  any  of  your  goods.  On  the  contrary, 
In  spite  of  our  poverty  we  make  you  every  day  rich  presents. 
Then  it  is  not  our  interest  which  moves  us,  but  your  welfare. 
The  end  we  have  in  view  is  one  of  the  highest  importance.  It  is 
your  souls,  and  not  these  woods,  nor  these  rude  cabins,  that  have 
drawn  us  here.  Being  of  such  value  in  the  eyes  of  God,  can  we 
esteem  them  too  highly  1 " 

" '  Such  is  the  example  which  has  proved  the  most  effective 
means,  in  the  hand  of  the  Lord,  to  plant  the  faith  and  the  standard 
of  the  Cross  in  this  wilderness.' " 

His  wounds  having  been  dressed,  Bressani  returned  to 
Canada  in  season  to  be  present  at  Three  Rivers  at  the 


416  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS  AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

mock  treaty  with  the  Iroquois,  in  July,  1645.  Here  he 
met  with  kindness  some  of  his  tormentors.  In  the  autumn 
he  started  for  his  former  Huron  mission,  ignorant  of  the 
language,  but  preaching  by  the  veneration  won  for  him  by 
his  mutilations  and  scars,  and  his  dauntless  heroism. 
After  three  years  of  isolation  in  a  service  beset  with  dire- 
ful perils,  the  Hurons,  cut  off  from  trade  and  in  extreme 
want,  resolved  upon  a  desperate  effort  to  open  communi- 
cation with  the  French  at  Three  Rivers.  In  July,  1648, 
Bressani  started  with  a  convoy  of  two  hundred  and  fifty 
Indians,  more  than  half  of  whom  were  Christian  catechu- 
mens. Just  as  they  were  reaching  their  destination  they 
were  set  .upon  by  a  party  of  ambushed  Iroquois,  but  came 
off  victors,  taking  thirty-five  prisoners.  Bressani's  func- 
tions were  needed  in  absolving,  instructing,  and  baptizing 
the  dying.  On  this  occasion  some  Algonquin  allies  of  the 
Hurons  were  the  first  to  refrain,  under  the  influence  of 
their  mission  teachings,  from  torturing  a  prisoner,  given  to 
them  for  that  purpose.  The  Hurons  said  they  could  ad- 
mire but  could  not  imitate  the  humanity.  While  the  In- 
dians drove  their  traffic,  Bressani  went  to  Quebec,  full  of 
glowing  zeal  and  undiminished  constancy  to  win  more 
laborers  and  to  obtain  altar  supplies.  Five  more  Fathers 
were  designated  for  the  mission.  Said  one  of  them :  "  We 
shall  be  taken,  we  shall  be  massacred,  we  shall  be  burned. 
Let  it  be  so  !  The  bed  does  not  always  make  the  happiest 
death.  I  see  no  one  drop  his  head.  On  the  contrary,  each 
craves  the  post.  To  reach  the  field  one  must  smell  the 
smoke  of  the  Iroquois  cabins,  and  perhaps  be  roasted  by  a 
slow  fire.  But  whatever  befalls  us,  1  know  well  that  the 
hearts  of  those  whom  God  shall  call,  will  there  find  his 
paradise,  and  that  their  zeal  will  not  be  stifled  by  water  or 
flames."  The  party  returned  safely,  with  twelve  soldiers, 
some  workmen,  and  a  cannon,  twenty-six  Frenchmen  rein- 
forcing it.  But  on  reaching  their  villages  they  were  torn 
with  horror  and  rage  at  the  scene  before  them.  The  Iro- 


PATE   OF   THE   HURON   MISSIONS.  417 

quois,  continuing  the  war  of  desolation  and  extinction  on 
which  they  had  entered,  had  struck  an  appalling  blow  at 
the  mission  of  St.  Joseph,  killing  seven  hundred  Hurons, 
with  the  misssionary  Father  Daniel.  On  the  6th  of  March 
of  the  next  year,  1649,  the  mission  of  St.  Ignatius  shared 
the  same  appalling  fate, — Fathers  Brebeuf  and  Lalemant 
perishing  with  their  flock.  The  inhabitants  of  five  of  the 
Huron  villages,  in  their  fright  and  despair,  burned  their 
cabins  and  dispersed  to  various  other  mission  stations. 
There  were  then  eleven  of  these  stations,  —  eight  for  the 
Hurons,  and  three  for  the  Algonquins,  served  by  eighteen 
of  the  Fathers.  Forty  Frenchmen,  soldiers,  traders,  and 
domestics  lived  with  them.  The  principal  mission  was 
that  of  St.  Marie,  which  a  fort  was  supposed  to  make  safe 
and  tenable ;  but  famine  compelled  its  desertion,  and  Mani- 
toulin  Island  was  sought  as  a  refuge.  The  Huron  chiefs 
were  reluctant  to  go  so  far,  and  the  missionaries,  yielding  to 
their  passionate  entreaties,  agreed  to  go  with  them  to  the 
Island  St.  Joseph.  It  was  with  heavy  hearts  that  they 
abandoned  St.  Marie,  which  with  all  its  woes  and  wretched- 
ness had  become  to  them  a  second  country.  Here,  too,  in 
their  new  refuge,  famine  made  horrible  ravages  with  the 
wretched  remnant.  Soon  news  came  of  the  massacre  at 
St.  Jean,  in  which  Father  Gamier  perished.  The  heroic 
Bressani  was  again  sent  for  relief  to  Quebec,  and  reached 
it  in  safety ;  but  he  vainly  sought  succor  from  the  enfeebled 
colonists.  He  longed  to  return,  even  empty  of  relief,  to 
his  despairing  flock,  but  could  not  start  till  June  15,  1650. 
His  errand  then  was,  as  had  been  agreed  upon  in  Quebec, 
to  gather  the  Huron  remnant  to  the  neighborhood  of  that 
place.  As  the  party  were  encamped  near  the  moutli  of  the 
Ottawa  they  were  set  upon  furiously  by  ten  Iroquois,  six 
of  whom  fell.  Bressani  was  dangerously  but  not  fatally 
wounded.  Farther  on  in  their  route  they  met  Father 
Ragueneau,  with  a  crowd  of  three  hundred  of  every  age 
and  sex,  rushing  on  to  throw  themselves  under  the  pro 

27 


418  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

tection  of  the  French.  Bressani  and  his  party  returned 
with  them  to  Quebec,  where  shortly  all  the  missionaries 
left  alive,  with  the  sad  remains  of  their  flocks,  gathered 
for  an  asylum.  The  Huron  mission  was  ended.  Many 
of  the  Fathers  were  sent  back  to  Europe.  Among  these 
was  Bressani.  Only  his  vow  of  obedience  would  have  rec- 
onciled him,  though  wrecked  in  health,  to  leave  the  scene 
of  his  labors  and  woes  and  his  dear  neophytes.  He  em- 
barked for  Italy,  Nov.  1,  1650.  His  strength  was  renewed. 
He  preached  with  great  power  and  acceptance  in  the  prin- 
cipal cities  of  Italy.  He  could  say,  "  I  bear  in  my  body 
the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus."  He  retired  at  last  to  the 
house  of  the  Novitiate  at  Florence,  where  he  died,  Sept. 
9,  1672,  full  of  years  and  of  honors. 

The  series  of  catastrophes  which  thus  brought  a  complete 
discomfiture  upon  the  heroic  efforts  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers 
marks  the  surrender  of  the  Huron  missions.  One  by  one 
their  villages,  and  then  their  places  of  refuge,  had  been 
desolated.  The  proud  hopes  which  rested  on  visions  and 
ecstasies  and  anticipated  the  crowns  of  martyrdom  were 
blasted.  But  those  in  whose  heroic  breasts  such  hopes  had 
glowed  with  more  of  just  assurance  than  any  human  long- 
ings can  claim,  did  win  and  now  wear  the  martyr's  crown. 
Such  of  them  as  returned  to  Europe  were  ready  and  anxious, 
at  the  word  of  their  superior,  to  come  back  to  the  scene  of 
their  sacrifices.  Of  those  who  remained  here,  most  became 
victims.  Another  company  of  the  Fathers  were  yet  to  find 
the  field  for  similar  labors  and  woes  in  the  far  West. 
But  of  those  whose  way  of  peril  and  of  death  we  have  been 
tracking,  we  repeat  responsively  the  words  of  Mr.  Parkman, 
so  apt  and  eloquent :  "  Their  virtues  shine  amid  the  rubbish 
of  error  like  diamonds  and  gold  in  the  gravel  of  the  torrent." 
He  bears  witness  to  the  softening  influence  of  the  Jesuits 
on  the  ferocity  of  the  savages.  He  also  regards  the  series 
of  Iroquois  onsets  at  this  period,  which  nearly  annihilated 
the  Hurons  and  the  Algonquins,  as  closing  the  missionary 


PROTESTANT   MISSIONS.  419 

epoch  in  Canada,  and  yielding  the  field  to  the  aims  of  French 
policy  and  trade  for  secular  dominion.  In  this  case  it  was 
not  by  invading  white  men,  greedy  for  territory  and  plun- 
der, but  by  the  ferocity  of  their  own  kindred  tribes,  that  the 
Hurons  were  extirpated.  Yet  the  Iroquois  were  armed  by 
the  Dutch.  The  result  might  have  been  otherwise.  Pros- 
perous and  extended  missions  might  have  brought  the  whole 
region  of  the  lakes  and  the  West  under  priestly  sway, 
through  France ;  and  an  Indian  empire,  "  tamed  but  not 
civilized,"  might  have  grown  up  while  the  seaboard  colonies 
were  weak. 

III.  Protestant  Mission-work  among  the  Indians.  —  As 
we  have  taken  the  Jesuit  Fathers  of  New  France  to  rep- 
resent to  us  the  missionary  work  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  for  our  aborigines,  so  the  Puritan  ministers  of  New 
England  may  represent  to  us  the  same  work  under  Prot- 
estantism. 

After  the  settlement  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  the  first  pub- 
lication through  the  press  in  London,  specially  prepared  in 
the  form  of  a  Report  of  the  fortune  of  the  enterprise,  was  a 
vigorously  written  pamphlet  issued  in  1643,  entitled,  "  New 
England's  First  Fruits ;  etc."  The  first  subject  presented 
is  the  relations  established  between  the  colonists  and  the 
natives,  with  particular  reference  to  the  work  of  conversion. 
The  pledges  made  in  the  charter,  and  the  avowals  and  pro- 
fessions of  the  colonists  as  to  their  intentions  and  obliga- 
tions towards  the  Indians  were  then  fresh  in  their  minds. 
With  the  exception  of  the  bloody  and  almost  exterminating 
war  with  the  Pequots,  which  is  represented  as  having  been 
provoked  by  the  savages,  and  to  have  had  peculiar  reasons 
for  justifying  it,  there  had  been  a  show  of  amity  between 
the  whites  and  the  few  red  men  they  had  encountered. 
There  is  a  tone  of  satisfaction  and  heartiness  about  the 
report  of  the  progress  of  a  Christian  work  among  the  In- 
dians. Instances  are  given  of  apparently  real  convictions 


420  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

atid  conversions,  according  to  the  Puritan  standard.  There 
are  several  English  families  which  have  Indians  for  servants 
and  laborers.  Many  of  these  enjoy  an  attendance  on  "  the 
Word,"  religious  and  Bible  lessons,  family  prayers,  grace  at 
meals,  etc.,  and  offer  evidence  of  being  really  reached  by 
compunctions  of  sin,  and  good  hopes.  Their  sagamores 
had  welcomed  the  whites,  and  mutual  courtesies  had  passed 
between  them.  Rights  in  land  had  been  fairly  purchased, 
and  no  trespasses  were  allowed. 

But,  —  and  here  comes  in  full  recognition  the  character- 
istic disgust  of  the  English  for  the  Indians,  which  the 
French  seem  never  to  have  felt  or  else  cautiously  sup- 
pressed,—  the  authors  of  this  pamphlet  arrest  themselves 
while  most  complacent  in  their  account  of  the  Indians, 
thus :  "  Yet  (mistake  us  not)  we  are  wont  to  keep  them  at 
such  a  distance  (knowing  they  serve  the  Devil  and  are  led 
by  him)  as  not  to  embolden  them  too  much,  or  trust  them 
too  far ;  though  we  do  them  what  good  we  can."  "  No  real 
intentions  of  evil  against  us"  have  been  seen  in  any  of 
them,  "  excepting  that  act  of  the  Pequots. . .  .  And  if  there 
should  be  such  intentions,  and  that  they  all  should  combine 
together  against  us,  with  all  their  strength  that  they  could 
raise,  we  see  no  probable  ground  at  all  to  fear  any  hurt 
from  them,  they  being  naked  men  and  the  number  of  them 
that  be  amongst  us  not  considerable." 

In  the  charter  patents  of  all  the  New  England  colonies, 
in  the  directions  and  instructions  issued  to  their  magis- 
trates, and  in  the  professions  of  their  leading  officials,  the 
Christianizing  of  the  native  savages  of  the  continent  held, 
as  we  have  seen,  a  very  prominent  place.  They  were  to  be 
treated  justly  and  kindly,  to  be  converted  to  and  by  the 
gospel,  and  to  be  civilized.  When  John  Eliot  and  Thomas 
Mayhew  simultaneously  first  set  about  an  efficient  effort 
to  fulfil  these  obligations  and  avowals,  some  of  the  most 
inquisitive  of  the  natives  put  to  them  the  natural  but  em- 
barrassing question,  why  the  English  should  have  allowed 


DELAY  OF  EFFORT  IN  MASSACHUSETTS.  421 

nearly  thirty  years,  the  period  of  a  generation,  to  pass 
since  they  had  occupied  the  soil  of  Massachusetts,  without 
undertaking  the  serious  work.  The  colonists  had  learned 
enough  of  the  Indian  tongue  for  the  purposes  of  trade  and 
barter;  they  had  made  the  natives  feel  the  power  and 
superiority  of  the  white  men,  and  kept  them  at  a  distance 
as  barbarians  and  pagans,  holding  them  subject  to  their 
own  laws  for  theft,  polygamy,  and  murder,  and  waging 
dire  war  against  them  for  acts  which  the  Indians  regarded 
only  as  a  defence  of  their  natural  rights :  but  as  yet,  and 
not  till  a  long  interval  of  years  had  passed,  had  the  white 
men  proposed  to  make  the  savages  equal  sharers  in  the 
blessings  of  their  civilization  and  religion.  So  far  as  the 
needful  efforts  to  this  end  would  have  required  expense 
and  any  combined  and  systematic  labor,  the  colonists  might 
reasonably  have  explained  and  excused  their  delay  by  their 
own  scanty  means  and  the  extreme  difficulty  they  found  in 
maintaining  their  own  existence,  and  in  laying,  through 
toil  and  struggle  and  many  bufferings,  the  foundations  of 
their  commonwealth.  Incidentally,  too,  we  must  recognize 
the  fact,  that  from  the  first  all  the  Indians  who  came  in 
contact  with  the  English  received  from  them  help,  tools, 
appliances,  resources,  and  many  comforts  to  relieve  the 
wretchedness  of  their  lot  and  life.  The  childlike  sincerity 
of  Eliot  furnished  him  with  a  reply  which  best  apologized 
for  the  neglect  of  the  past  by  regret  and  by  the  earne3tness 
of  his  purpose  for  the  future.  The  Presbyterian  Baylie,  in 
his  invective  against  the  New  England  "  Church  way,"  l 
charges  upon  its  supporters  a  neglect  of  the  work  of  con- 
version. He  says  that  they  were,  "  of  all  that  ever  crossed 
the  American  seas,  the  most  neglectful"  of  that  work. 
The  grounds  of  his  charge  rest  upon  quotations  from  Roger 
Williams.  On  his  voyage  to  England,  in  the  spring  of 
1643,  Williams  employed  himself  upon  his  "  Key  into  the 
Language  of  America,"  which  was  published  in  London  in 

1  A  Dissuasive  from  the  Errours  of  the  Time.     London,  1645. 


422  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

the  summer.  He  had  also  published  a  "little  additional 
discourse  ...  of  the  name  Heathen,"  treating  of  these  na- 
tives of  New  England  "  and  that  great  point  of  their  con- 
version." Of  this  latter  work  no  copy  was  known  to  be 
in  existence  until  one  was  discovered  last  year.1  Baylie 
quotes  from  it  the  following  sentences  :  — 

"  For  our  New  England  parts,  I  can  speak  it  confidently,  I  know 
it  to  have  been  easy  for  myself,  long  ere  this,  to  have  brought 
many  thousands  of  these  natives  —  yea,  the  whole  country  —  to  a 
far  greater  antichristian  conversion  than  ever  was  heard  of  in 
America.  I  could  have  brought  the  whole  country  to  observe  one 
day  in  seven  :  I  add,  to  have  received  baptism  ;  to  have  come  to  a 
stated  church  meeting ;  to  have  maintained  priests,  and  forms  of 
prayer,  and  a  whole  form  of  antichristian  worship,  in  life  and 
death.  .  .  .  Woe  be  to  me  if  I  call  that  conversion  to  God  which  is 
indeed  the  subversion  of  the  souls  of  millions  in  Christendom  from 
one  false  worship  to  another !  " 

He  says,  "  God  was  pleased  to  give  me  a  painful,  patient 
spirit  to  lodge  with  them  in  their  filthy,  smoky  holes  to 
gain  their  tongue."  Baylie  exempts  from  his  censure  Wil- 
liams alone,  who  "  in  the  time  of  his  banishment  did  essay 
what  could  be  done  with  those  desolate  souls."  It  is  pos- 
sible that  the  publication  of  Williams' s  Key,  with  the  inter- 
est which  it  awakened  in  England,  may  have  prompted  the 
action  of  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  in  some  fur- 
ther enactments  for  the  Indians.  At  the  Court  in  March, 
1644,  some  of  the  sachems,  with  their  subjects,  had  been 
induced  to  come  under  a  covenant  of  voluntary  subjection 
to  the  Government,  and  into  an  agreement  to  worship  the 
God  of  the  English,  to  observe  the  commandments,  and  to 
allow  their  children  to  learn  to  read  the  Bible,  etc.  An 
order  of  the  Court  in  the  November  following  provided  that 
the  county  courts  should  care  for  the  civilization  of  the 
Indians  and  for  their  instruction  in  the  knowledge  and 
worship  of  God.  Again,  in  October,  1645,  the  Court  desired 

1  See  note,  p.  74. 


ELIOT   AND   MAYHEW.  423 

that  "  the  reverend  elders  propose  means  to  bring  the  na- 
tives to  the  knowledge  of  God  and  his  ways,  and  to  civilize 
them  as  speedily  as  may  be." 

President  Dunster,  of  Harvard  College,  seems  to  have 
been  regarded  as  eccentric  because  he  urged  that  the  Indi- 
ans were  to  be  instructed  through  their  own  language  rather 
than  through  the  English.  In  November,  1646,  the  Court, 
admitting  that  the  Indians  were  not  to  be  compelled  to 
adopt  Christianity,  decreed  that  they  were  to  be  held  amen- 
able to  what  it  regarded  as  simple  natural  religion,  and  so 
should  be  punished  for  blasphemy,  and  should  be  forbidden 
to  worship  false  gods,  and  that  all  "powwowing"  should 
at  once  be  prohibited.  "  Necessary  and  wholesome  laws 
for  reducing  them  to  the  civility  of  life  "  should  be  made 
and  read  to  them  once  in  a  year  by  some  able  interpreter. 

The  conspicuous  and  ever-honored  representative  of  Puri- 
tan zeal  and  labor  in  civilizing  and  Christianizing  the  In- 
dians, who  with  his  co-worker  Mayhew  can  alone  "  match 
the  Jesuit "  in  this  work,  was  the  famous  John  Eliot.  Ed- 
ward Winslow,  in  his  "  Glorious  Progress  of  the  Gospel 
among  the  Indians  "  (London,  1649),  had  spoken  of  Eliot 
as  " the  Indian  evangelist"  The  modest  saint,  writing  to 
Winslow  at  the  close  of  the  year,  after  he  had  seen  the 
above  tract,  expresses  a  wish  that  that  sacred  word  "  could 
be  obliterated,  if  any  of  the  books  remain"  unsold;  because 
Winslow  had  seemed  to  use  the  title  "for  that  extraor- 
dinary office  mentioned  in  the  New  Testament."  "  I  do 
beseech  you,"  he  adds,  "  to  suppress  all  such  things,  if  ever 
you  should  have  occasion  of  doing  the  like.  Let  us  speak 
and  do  and  carry  all  things  with  humility."  What  would 
Eliot  have  said  to  the  title  of  "  the  apostle,"  which  he  has 
long  borne  and  will  ever  bear  unchallenged  ;  or  even  to 
that  of  "  the  Augustine  of  New  England,"  which  M.  Du 
Ponceau  attached  to  his  name  ? 

John  Eliot,  born  near  Nasing,  in  Essex,  England,  in 
1604,  graduated  A.  B.  at  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  in  1623, 


424  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

and  prepared  for  the  ministry.  From  the  first  he  was  dis- 
tinguished for  his  talent  and  proficiency  in  the  study  of  lan- 
guages. He  became  an  assistant  in  the  grammar-school  of 
Mr.  Hooker  (afterwards  of  our  Cambridge),  at  Little  Bad- 
dow,  in  Essex.  He  came  to  Boston  in  November,  1631. 
Having  pledged  himself  to  become  the  minister  of  his  fel- 
low-voyagers if  they  should  claim  his  services,  he  accepted 
the  office  over  them  in  their  settlement  at  Roxbury,  as  con- 
stituting the  First  Church  there,  Nov.  5,  1632;  though 
he  had  to  resist  the  urgent  desire  of  the  Church  in  Boston 
to  become  its  pastor,  in  the  absence  of  Wilson.  He  was 
soon  married  to  a  lady  to  whom  he  had  been  engaged  in 
England,  and  who  followed  him  hither.  He  retained  his 
office  in  Roxbury  till  his  death,  May  20,  1690,  at  the  age  of 
eighty-six, —  his  faithful  partner,  Mrs.  Ann  Eliot,  having 
gone  before  him,  in  her  eighty-fourth  year,  March  24, 
1687. 

It  would  appear  that  Eliot  had  given  heart  and  thought  to 
a  Christian  service  for  the  Indians  in  their  instruction  and 
civilization,  immediately  upon  his  settlement  at  Roxbury. 
As  soon  as  the  enterprise  exhibited  hopefulness,  and  through 
the  efforts  of  Edward  Winslow,  at  the  time  agent  of  the 
colony  in  London,  had  been  brought  to  the  notice  and 
sympathy  of  friends  in  England,  measures  were  taken, 
first  privately  and  then  by  a  parliamentary  corporation,  to 
draw  to  it  patronage  and  funds.  But  it  should  always  be 
mentioned  to  the  honor  of  Eliot,  that  his  sacred  aim  was 
self-prompted.  Mayhew,  of  Martha's  Vineyard,  appears  to 
have  engaged  simultaneously  in  the  same  effort,  and  in 
similar  ways ;  but  there  had  been  no  concert  between  the 
two.  In  fact,  Eliot's  first  announcement  of  his  purpose 
met  with  incredulity  and  opposition  from  some  around  him; 
and  though  he  was  afterwards  greatly  cheered  and,  aided 
by  sympathy  and  funds  from  the  English  society,  his  initi- 
atory work  and  his  hardest-won  success  preceded  its  organ- 
ization, as  well  as  the  very  moderate  recognition  of  the 


ELIOT  LEARNING  THE  NATIVE  LANGUAGE.  425 

interests  of  the  Indians  by  the  Massachusetts  Court,  which 
in  1647  voted  him  a  gratuity  of  ten  pounds.  Incidentally 
it  should  be  mentioned  that  the  early  struggles  and  poverty 
of  Harvard  College  found  in  that  same  society  more  effi- 
cient and  needful  patronage  than  has  been  generally  recog- 
nized, in  direct  and  indirect  aid  from  its  funds. 

Eliot  says  that  the  first  native,  "  whom  he  used  to  teach 
him  words  and  to  be  his  interpreter,"  was  an  Indian  who 
was  taken  in  the  Pequot  wars,  and  who  lived  with  Mr. 
Richard  Collicott,  of  Dorchester.  He  took  the  most  un- 
wearied pains  in  his  strange  lessons  from  this  uncouth 
teacher,  finding  progress  very  slow  and  baffling,  and  receiv- 
ing no  aid  in  it  whatever  from  his  skill  in  other  tongues  so 
differently  constituted,  inflected,  and  augmented.  Though 
he  is  regarded  as  having  gained  an  amazing  mastery  of  the 
Indian  language,  he  frequently,  during  the  full  half  cen- 
tury of  hi$,  work,  avows  and  laments  his  lack  of  skill  in  it. 
We  can  pick  out  from  his  extant  writings  scraps  of  informa- 
tion about  his  difficulties  and  his  mastery  of  them.  His 
main  dependence  was  upon  securing  the  more  intelligent, 
and,  as  he  calls  them,  "  nimble-witted "  natives,  young  or 
grown,  to  live  at  his  house  in  Roxbury,  to  be  the  medium 
of  communicating  to  him  words  and  ideas,  to  accompany 
him  on  his  visits,  and  to  be,  with  him,  mutually  teacher 
and  learner. 

Singularly  enough,  his  greatest  success  was  attained  in 
a  direction  which  we  should  have  thought  least  likely, — 
namely,  in  his  being  able  to  convey  to  the  Indians,  through 
what  seemed  to  be  their  own  poor  and  scant  vocabulary, 
spiritual  ideas,  truths,  and  relations.  Mr.  Shepherd,  in  his 
"  Cleare  Sunshine,"  etc.,  paid  him  a  beautiful  tribute,  when 
he  wrote :  "In  sacred  language,  about  the  holy  things  of 
God,  Mr.  Eliot  excels  any  other  of  the  English  that  in  the 
Indian  language  about  common  matters  (trade,  etc.)  excel 
him." 

Quite  different  opinions  were  at  the  time  expressed  by 


426  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

those  who  essayed,  as  interpreters,  teachers,  and  preachers, 
to  master  the  tongue,  as  to  the  construction  and  compass  of 
the  language,  and  the  difficulties  or  facilities  of  its  acqui- 
sition. It  would  seem  that  of  it,  as  of  other  languages, 
ancient  and  modern,  barbarous  or  cultivated,  written  or  un- 
written, it  was  easy  to  catch  enough  of  it  for  the  common 
intercourse  of  life  in  the  woods,  the  wigwam,  or  traffic. 
The  embarrassment  of  communication  in  it  increased  ac- 
cording to  the  importance  or  dignity  of  the  theme.  Mr. 
William  Leverich,  a  very  successful  preacher  to  the  Indians 
in  Sandwich,  Mass.,  wrote,  in  1651 :  — 

"  I  cannot  but  reckon  it  a  matter  of  success  and  encouragement 
that,  though  the  Indian  tongue  be  very  difficult,  irregular,  and 
anomalous,  and  wherein  I  cannot  meet  with  a  verb  substantive  as 
yet,  nor  any  such  particles  as  conjunctions,  etc.,  which  are  essential 
to  the  several  sorts  of  axioms,  and  consequently  to  all  rational  and 
perfect  discourses,  and  that  though  their  words  are  generally  very 
long,  even  sesquipidalia  verba,  yet  I  find  —  God  helping — not  only 
myself  to  learn  and  attain  more  of  it  in  a  short  time  than  I  could  of 
Latin,  Greek,  or  Hebrew  in  the  like  space  of  time,  when  my  memory 
was  stronger,  and  when  all  known  rules  of  art  are  helpful  to  fasten 
such  notions  in  the  mind  of  the  learner ;  but  also  the  Indians  to 
understand  me  fully  (as  they  acknowledge),  so  far  as  I  have  gone. 
I  am  constrained  by  many  ambages  and  circumlocutions  to  supply 
the  former  defect,  to  express  myself  to  them  as  I  may."  l 

Eliot  seems  even  to  intimate  that  Cotton  of  Plymouth 
was  his  superior  in  a  mastery  of  the  Indian  tongue,  and 
he  relied  largely  upon  Cotton's  aid  in  his  translation  and 
printing  of  the  Scriptures.  He  gave  two  full  years  of  close 
study  and  practical  trial  of  the  language  before  he  ventured 
to  preach  in  it.  Feeling  that  the  time  had  fully  come  to 
justify  the  experiment,  he  invited  the  petty  chief  Waban 
and  some  of  his  Indians  to  gather  near  his  wigwam,  under 
an  oak  tree  on  a  hill  in  Nonantum,  now  Newton,  Mass.;  and 
on  the  28th  of  October,  1646,  he  discoursed  to  them  in  their 

1  The  Further  Progress  of  the  Gospel,  etc. 


ELIOT   TRAINING   THE   INDIANS.  427 

own  tongue,  from  Ezekiel  xxxvii.  9.  This,  his  first  service, 
lasting  for  an  hour  and  a  quarter,  was  introduced  by  a 
prayer  in  English,  because  he  scrupled  lest  he  might  use 
some  unfit  or  unworthy  terms  in  the  solemn  office.  This 
prompted  an  inquiry  from  his  hearers  whether  God  and 
Christ  could  understand  prayers  in  their  own  tongue.  In 
his  second  service,  a  fortnight  afterwards,  he  ventured  to 
pray  in  Indian.  In  his  successive  visits  to  his  deeply  inter- 
ested but  much  confused  disciples,  his  method  was,  to  offer 
a  short  prayer ;  to  recite  and  explain  the  Ten  Command- 
ments ;  to  describe  the  character  of  Christ,  how  he  appeared 
on  earth,  where  he  is  now,  and  his  coming  to  judge  the  good 
and  the  wicked ;  to  teach  the  creation  and  fall  of  man ;  and 
then  to  appeal  to  them  to  repent  and  pray,  and  come  to 
Christ  as  their  Saviour.  The  Indians  were  then  asked  and 
encouraged  to  put  questions  which  arose  in  their  own  minds, 
or  were  prompted  by  what  they  had  heard.  As  we  shall 
soon  see,  they  exhibited  much  acumen  in  using  this  privi- 
lege, generally  putting  apt  and  pertinent  inquiries,  showing 
that  their  minds  were  naturally  active  or  readily  quickened. 
For  instance,  they  were  at  once  puzzled  to  understand  how 
man  could  be  made  in  the  image  of  God,  when  the  Fourth 
Commandment  forbade  such  an  imitative  work.  Cotton 
Mather,  in  commending  Eliot's  style  in  sermonizing,  says : 
"  Lambs  might  wade  into  his  discourses  on  those  texts  and 
themes  wherein  elephants  might  swim."  Such  a  style 
must  have  been  equally  apt  for  his  white  or  red  auditors. 

From  time  to  time,  one  or  more  of  his  brother  elders  and 
of  the  magistrates,  with  the  Governor  and  some  of  the 
leading  men  of  the  colony,  accompanied  Eliot  on  his  mis- 
sionary visits,  listened  to  the  exercises,  and  learned  to  sym- 
pathize with  his  devoted  efforts;  and,  however  they  may 
have  measured  or  estimated  the  stages  of  progress  or  the 
prospect  of  desirable  and  rewarding  results,  they,  with 
scarce  an  exception,  showed  a  most  grateful  and  hearty 
appreciation  of  his  zeal  and  purpose.  From  the  very,  first 


428  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

stages  of  his  exacting  task  Eliot  was  sure  that  his  success 
was  dependent  upon  the  establishment  of  Indian  communi- 
ties in  settlements  exclusively  their  own,  with  fixed  habits 
of  life  and  industrious  occupations,  ultimately  with  school- 
teachers and  dames,  mechanics,  preachers,  and  local  magis- 
trates of  their  own  race,  and  with  all  the  comforts  and 
securities  of  the  towns  of  the  white  men,  and  their  organ- 
ized churches.  He  wrote,  "  I  find  it  absolutely  necessary 
to  carry  on  civility  with  religion."  The  Rev.  John  Dan- 
forth,  the  poet  divine  of  Dorchester,  whom  Eliot  helped  to 
put  in  office,  commemorated  the  Apostle  and  his  wife,  "  the 
virtuous  consort,"  in  some  verses  after  their  decease.  He 
thus  puts  into  rhyme  Eliot's  matter-of-fact  opinion  on  this 
subject :  — 

"Address,  I  pray,  your  senate  for  good  orders 
To  civilize  the  heathen  in  our  borders. 
Virtue  must  turn  into  necessity, 
Or  this  brave  work  will  in  its  urn  still  lie. 
Till  agriculture  and  cohabitation 
Come  under  full  restraint  and  regulation, 
Much  you  would  do  you  '11  find  impracticable, 
And  much  you  do  will  prove  unprofitable. 
In  common  lands  that  lie  unfenced,  you  know, 
The  husbandman  in  vain  doth  plow  and  sow  ; 
"We  hope  in  vain  the  plant  of  grace  will  thrive 
In  forests  where  civility  can't  live." 

After  many  visits  of  search  and  exploration  over  a  wide 
circuit,  with  Indian  companions  for  counsel  and  help,  Eliot 
chose  a  region  of  territory  a  part  of  which  now  bears,  its 
original  name,  —  Natick,  —  to  begin  his  great  experiment. 
"The  praying  Indians"  came  to  be  the  term,  hencefor- 
ward, for  designating  those  of  the  natives  who  had  been 
brought  under  degrees  of  instruction  and  of  voluntary  sub- 
mission to  Christian  influences.  By  the  earnest  and  effec- 
tive agency  of  Eliot  a  large  company  of  these  were  gathered 
to  the  above  named  site  in  1651,  as  a  place  for  their  perma- 
nent settlement  and  abode,  for  further  progress  in  civiliza- 
tion and  religion.  Besides  engaging  in  his  behalf  the  most 


VISIT  OF  A   JESUIT  TO   BOSTON.  429 

zealous  and  kind-hearted  of  his  own  brethren,  Eliot  was 
careful  to  secure  for  every  stage  of  his  undertaking  the 
sanction  and  patronage  of  the  General  Court,  which  he 
addressed  in  his  petitions,  and  which  he  kept  informed  of 
his  plans,  hopes,  and  progress.  It  is  noteworthy  to  read  in 
the  records  of  the  Court  its  orders  for  selecting,  bounding, 
and  securing  to  the  successive  settlements  of  the  Indians, 
for  their  ownership  and  improvements,  portions  of  that 
wilderness  territory  of  the  whole  of  which,  but  a  score 
of  years  before,  they  had  been  the  unchallenged  owners. 
From  the  date  just  named,  onward,  the  entries  on  the  Court 
records  indicate  that  its  legislation  for  the  Indians  alterna- 
ted in  measures  of  apprehension,  caution,  and  restraint, 
with  intended  patronage  and  favors. 

It  was  about  the  time  of  Eliot's  most  busy  and  anxious 
employment  in  planning  his  first  Indian  town,  that  there 
occurred  an  incident  in  his  life  at  Roxbury  which,  however 
much  or  little  significance  it  may  have  had  for  him,  pre- 
sents to  us  a  suggestiveness  and  a  charm  that  persuade  us 
to  linger  for  a  moment  upon  it.  The  incident  was  a  visit 
made  to  the  Puritan  Eliot  by  an  honored  and  devoted 
Jesuit  Father,  who  was  laboring  in  the  same  cause,  though 
in  another  way.  Father  Gabriel  Druillettes,  born  in 
France  in  1593,  was  sent  as  a  missionary  to  New  France, 
with  two  of  his  Jesuit  brethren,  in  1643.  The  horrid 
smoke  of  the  Indian  cabin,  in  his  first  winter  with  the 
Algonquins,  deprived  him,  after  intense  suffering,  of  his 
sight,  as  he  thought  permanently,  —  the  application  of  In- 
dian remedies  having  destroyed  his  hope  of  restoration. 
Hundreds  of  leagues  of  lake,  river,  mountain,  forest,  and 
swamp  kept  him  from  all  aid  and  sympathy  from  his  breth- 
ren. He  was  led  about  by  a  child,  and  performed  his  offi- 
ces and  functions  by  memory  and  touch.  His  faithful 
neophytes  proposed  to  draw  him  to  Quebec  on  a  sledge. 
He  laughed  at  this  proposal ;  and,  instead,  invited  them  to 
try  the  power  of  prayer.  A  votive  Mass  to  the  Virgin  was 


430  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

speedily  offered,  at  which  he  felt  his  way  among  the  vessels 
of  the  altar  and  recited  the  office  by  memory.  Just  as  he 
was  raising  the  Host  his  sight  returned,  and  never  failed 
him  again,  through  a  long-protracted  service  in  various 
places,  till  his  death  at  Quebec  in  1681,  at  the  age  of  eighty- 
eight.  He  was  sent  twice  by  the  Governor  of  Canada  on 
diplomatic  missions  to  New  England,  —  alone  in  1650,  and 
with  Godefroy,  of  the  Canadian  Council,  the  next  year.  This 
diplomatic  character  was  his  full  protection,  and,  in  Massa- 
chusetts at  least,  his  salvation  from  imprisonment  and  ban- 
ishment ;  and  from  death,  should  he  break  confinement  or 
return  again.  Such  was  the  reception  Massachusetts  then 
gave  by  her  law,  copying  that  of  England,  to  "  Papistical 
and  Jesuitical"  intruders,  unless  they  might  be  shipwrecked 
on  the  coast.  Respect,  hospitality,  and  kindness — for  which 
the  Father  expresses  his  warm  recognition  and  gratitude  in 
his  own  journal  (fortunately  in  our  hands)  —  was  the  far 
preferable  treatment  extended  to  him.  He  says  he  was 
called  the  "Patriarch"  on  the  Kennebec  and  the  coast  of 
Acadia.  Leaving  Quebec  Sept.  1,  1650,  he  went  to  Nor- 
ridgewock,  where  he  met  John  Winslow,  the  agent  of  the 
Plymouth  colony  at  that  post,  and  brother  of  Edward,  who 
had  procured  from  Parliament,  July  27, 1649,  the  charter 
of  the  Corporation  for  Propagating  the  Gospel  here,  in  aid 
of  Eliot's  work. 

It  would  seem  that  Druillettes  and  Winslow  must  have 
had  even  a  jolly  time  together  in  the  warmth  of  good  fel- 
lowship and  cheer,  for  the  Jesuit  expresses  himself  as 
heartily  upon  it  as  became  his  cloth.  Leaving  Augusta  by 
land  for  Merry  Meeting  Bay,  and  sailing  thence  November 
25,  they  reached  Cape  Ann  December  5,  and,  partly  by  land 
and  boat,  came  on  shore  at  Boston  December  8.  We  may 
be  sure  that  Winslow  took  care  that  the  Jesuit  should  at 
once  be  known  as  an  ambassador.  The  latter  playfully 
calls  Winslow  his  "  Pereira," — in  allusion  to  the  Portu- 
guese merchant  who  had  shown  like  care  and  love,,  as  a 


RECEPTION   OF  DRUILLETTES.  431 

friend,  to  St.  Francis  Xavier.  His  mission,  founded  upon 
previous  correspondence  with  Governor  Winthrop,  was  to 
induce  the  Massachusetts  to  enter  into  an  alliance  with  the 
French  for  protection,  and  even  warfare,  against  the  Iro- 
quois,  or  the  Mohawks  or  Maquas.  Winslow  took  Druil- 
lettes  to  the  house  of  Major-General  Edward  Gibbons,  a 
man  of  multiform  and  varied  experience,  serviceable,  and 
of  some  repute,  but  of  dubitable  sanctity  as  a  Puritan  under 
church  covenant.  He  was  a  most  cordial  host,  giving  the 
Jesuit  a  private  room,  with  "  a  key,"  in  his  own  house,  and 
being  thus  probably  an  abettor  of  the  first  service  of  the 
Mass  in  Boston.  The  Jesuit  was  next  taken  to  visit  the 
Governor  (Dudley)  at  Roxbury,  to  whom  he  presented  his 
letters.  Here,  too,  he  was  most  cordially  received,  the 
Governor  promising  to  notify  the  magistrates,  with  whom, 
in  strange  grouping,  the  Jesuit  dined  on  the  13th.  He 
represented  himself  as  ambassador  in  the  interest  and  for 
the  protection  of  his  catechumens  at  Kennebec,  as  against 
their  deadly  foes  the  Iroquois,  who  sooner  or  later  would 
be  in  hostility  against  the  English.  He  was  turned  over  to 
the  authorities  of  Plymouth,  as  having  jurisdiction  over  the 
region  from  which  lie  came.  Winslow  accompanied  him  to 
the  Pilgrim  colony,  where  he  arrived  December  22,  lodging 
with  Mr.  Paddy.  The  excellent  Governor  Bradford,  with 
much  courtesy,  received  him  at  dinner,  which,  it  being  Fri- 
day, was  considerately  one  of  fish,  and  paid  all  his  expen- 
ses. He  returned  to  Boston  by  land  on  the  24th  Decem- 
ber. He  had  further  interviews  with  Ellery  and  Dudley, 
and,  embarking  for  the  Kennebec  Jan.  5,  1651  (N.  S.), 
was  compelled  by  bad  weather  to  put  into  Marblehead. 
Here,  he  says,  the  minister  "  received  me  with  great  affection, 
and  took  me  to  Salem  to  visit  Governor  Endicott."  This 
stern  Puritan  of  the  Puritans  was  most  friendly  and  hos- 
pitable to  the  Jesuit,  conversing  with  him  in  French,  giving 
him  money,  as  he  was  penniless,  and  inviting  him  to  dine 
with  the  local  magistrates. 


432  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

It  is  pleasant  to  follow  in  Druillettes'  Journal,  through 
its  marvellous  misspelling  of  the  names  of  places  and  per- 
sons, his  recognitions  of  kindly  and  cordial  treatment. 
The  one  that  especially  engages  us  is  that  in  which,  as  he 
was  returning  from  Plymouth  to  Boston,  he  tells  us  that 
he  went  to  see  "  Mr.  Heliot,"  the  minister ;  adding,  "  He 
treated  me  with  respect  and  affection,  and  invited  me 
to  pass  the  winter  with  him."  Here  then,  face  to  face  to- 
gether, in  the  humble  cottage,  but  by  the  generous  fireside 
of  the  village  wilderness  pastor,  were  seated  in  respect- 
ful and  affectionate  converse  two  Christian  men,  each  and 
both  of  whom  spent  nearly  half  a  century  in  what  was  to 
them  the  most  sacred  of  all  labors.  It  must  have  been  on 
or  near  Christmas  day.  We  know  well  how  much  there 
was  to  alienate  them  in  opinion,  in  prejudice,  in  profoundly 
sincere  convictions,  and  in  experience.  Had  they  been  so 
disposed,  the  very  sight  of  each  other  in  times  of  religious 
ardor  and  passionate  strife,  like  those  through  which  they 
lived,  might  have  prompted  a  bitter  and  aimless  discussion. 
But  we  are  certain  that  nothing  of  this  sort  passed  between 
them.  They  were  Christian  gentlemen.  Peaceful,  gentle, 
and  respectful,  however  otherwise  earnest,  must  have  been 
their  interview  by  the  fireside  on  that  winter's  day.  The 
season  of  the  year,  so  dreary  and  perilous  for  the  Jesuit's 
return  journey,  doubtless  suggested  the  kindly  invitation  to 
him  to  make  his  winter's  home  with  the  Puritan  pastor. 
We  picture  the  scene  to  our  minds,  and  love  to  gaze  upon  it 
as  full  of  pleasing  and  elevating  suggestions.  We  might 
be  interested  in  the  subject  of  their  conversation  for  itself ; 
we  certainly  should  be  interested  in  their  talk,  because  it 
was  theirs.  A  letter  of  Eliot's  of  that  date  shows  that  he 
was  seriously  exercised  upon  the  question  whether  the  na- 
tives of  the  continent  were  the  descendants  of  the  lost 
Jewish  tribes.  The  question  was  then  one  of  exciting 
interest  and  discussion  among  the  Puritans,  and  it  appears 
that  some  of  Eliot's  own  brethren  were  cool  in  their  sym- 


DRUILLETTES   AND   ELIOT.  433 

pathy  with  or  distrustful  of  any  great  success  in  his  labors 
among  the  Indians,  because  they  were  persuaded  that  the 
conversion  of  the  heathen  was  to  be  deferred  until  after 
"  the  coming  in  of  the  Jews."  Now  if  these  heathen  were 
at  the  same  time  dispersed  and  degenerate  Jews,  Eliot,  of 
course,  would  find  his  side  greatly  cheered  and  strength- 
ened. But  this  was  rather  a  bon  bouche  for  Puritans  than 
for  the  Jesuit,  and  it  is  hardly  likely  that  Druillettes  had 
any  special  views  about  it  or  would  care  to  discuss  it. 

As  to  Druillettes'  errand,  this  is  to  be  said.  There  seem 
to  have  been  a  hope  and  purpose  that  the  union  of  the  four 
New  England  colonies,  in  1643,  should  have  been  more 
comprehensive,  embracing  the  French  and  the  Dutch,  each 
colony  to  retain  its  own  language,  religion,  and  habits,  but 
all  to  be  confederate  for  protection,  thrift,  and  commerce. 
Hutchinson1  says  proposals  had  in  1648  been  made  to 
D'Ailleboust,  Governor  of  Canada,  for  a  free  commerce 
with  Massachusetts.  These  were  received  with  pleasure, 
and  correspondence  was  continued  till  Druillettes  was  sent 
on  his  mission  in  1650.  The  prime  condition  exacted  by 
the  French  was  that  the  English  should  combine  with  them 
in  hostilities  against  the  Iroquois,  as  common  enemies. 
Here  we  note  the  working  of  the  complications  of  the 
rival  relations  of  the  European  nationalities  with  our  abo- 
rigines. The  Dutch  had  already  armed  the  Troquois  at  the 
cost  of  the  French.  Massachusetts  was  safe  from  that  foe, 
and  did  not  wish  to  open  a  war.  Plymouth  was  willing  to 
comply  with  Druillettes'  proposal ;  but  neither  that  colony 
nor  Massachusetts  could  act  in  the  matter  without  the  con- 
sent of  the  Commissioners  of  the  Four  Colonies.  Druillettes 
came  the  next  year  with  Councillor  Godefroy  to  confer  with 
them,  but  he  did  not  succeed  in  the  purpose  of  his  embassy. 
In  the  records  of  the  Commissioners  there  is  no  recognition 
of  the  priestly  character  of  the  envoy.  He  is  referred  to 
as  "  Mr.  Drovilletty,"  bearing  a  letter  "  to  the  honored  Gov- 

1  History  of  Massachusetts,  i.  156. 
28 


434  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

ernor  from  Mounsier  Delabout,  Governor  and  Leftenant 
for  the  King  of  France,  in  the  flood  St.  Lawrence."  The 
Commissioners  were  quite  ready  to  enter  into  friendly  rela- 
tions for  trade,  but  were  chary  of  any  entanglements  in 
matters  of  war. 

There  was  matter  enough  on  which  the  two  ministers 
of  Christ  could  converse  together.  Possibly  there  might 
have  been  seated  by  the  fireside  one  or  more  of  those  in- 
mates of  his  family  of  the  native  stock  whom  Eliot  con- 
tinued to  turn  to  his  own  help  in  the  language.  That 
language  and  its  dialects  as  compared  with  tongues  more 
familiar  to  Druillettes,  and  a  statement  by  Eliot  of  the  ap- 
proaching culmination  of  his.  plans  in  an  Indian  town,  may 
well  have  been  the  topics  of  the  interview. 

The  experiment  at  Natick,  as  it  was  the  first  of  a  series 
of  such  made  with  degrees  of  completeness  in  several 
places,  was  from  the  beginning,  and  through  its  whole 
development  and  trial,  under  the  especial  care  of  Eliot. 
There  was  not  in  him  a  particle  of  assumption  or  self- 
assertion  in  magnifying  his  cause,  or  in  insisting  upon  his 
own  authority  or  opinion.  All  along  he  sought  to  secure 
and  to  deserve  the  intelligent  advice  and  the  hearty  co- 
operation of  the  magistrates,  ministers,  and  leading  men ; 
and  he  sometimes  yielded  his  own  judgment  or  preference 
to  conciliate  and  avert  variances.  There  was  a  stage  in 
the  experiment  when  his  well-guarded  and  moderate  hopes 
seemed  to  have  the  promise  of  being  crowned  with  fair  suc- 
cess. The  records  of  his  own  church  and  the  traditions  of 
his  ministry  in  Roxbury  prove  that  he  most  faithfully  per- 
formed there  all  the  laborious  routine  duties  of  a  teacher 
and  pastor  in  those  days,  in  Sunday  and  Lecture  service, 
in  catechising,  in  administering  discipline,  and  in  constant 
oversight  of  the  members  of  families  in  their  various  rela- 
tions, with  cares  for  the  sick,  the  sorrowing,  the  dying,  and 
bereaved.  His  rule  was  to  visit  Natick  once  a  fortnight, 
riding  there  in  all  weathers,  on  his  own  horse,  by  paths 


435 

through  the  woods  which  he  did  more  than  any  one  else  to 
make  a  road  over  hills  and  swamps  and  streams.  The  dis- 
tance was  eighteen  miles.  He  was  always  laden  with  mis- 
cellaneous burdens.  Though  his  own  beverage  was  water, 
and  his  diet  of  the  simplest,  and  he  abhorred  the  use  of 
tobacco,  he  was  willing  that  the  Indians  should  in  some 
cases  have  wine ;  and  he  himself,  after  his  professional  work 
was  done,  distributed  tobacco  to  the  men,  and  apples  and 
other  little  gifts  to  the  pappooses.  Probably  some  cast-off 
clothing  from  the  backs  of  his  own  flock,  with  household 
stuff  generally,  formed  a  portion  of  his  load.  There  are 
evidences  that,  like  most  fond  and  unselfish  laborers  for 
pets  of  their  own  fancy,  he  had  acquired  that  exquisite  art 
of  begging  gracefully  from  others,  he  himself  dropping  out 
in  the  solicitations. 

Anything  like  the  weakness  of  mere  enthusiasm  or  over- 
expectation  from  his  labors  was  all  along  provided  against 
in  his  case  by  the  lack  of  them  in  many  others  around  him. 
The  worldly-minded  and  "  the  ungodly  "  —  and  there  were 
some  such  even  in  his  Puritan  community  —  ridiculed  his 
schemes,  and  did  what  they  could  to  thwart  them  so  far  as 
they  would  tend  to  protect  the  Indians  against  contemptu- 
ous treatment  or  injustice  in  trade.  Even  some  of  the  sin- 
cerest  yet  narrowest  sympathizers  mistrusted  lest  Eliot's 
project  was  premature,  as  they  thought  the  time  had  not 
been  providentially  reached  "  for  the  coming  in  of  the  ful- 
ness of  the  Gentiles."  The  magistrates  were  cautious  and 
often  hesitating,  and  in  many  cases  failed  to  carry  into 
effect  provisions  of  their  own  enactment  designed  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Indians.  Though  the  Puritan  missionaries, 
in  the  field  of  their  effort,  did  not  encounter  such  malig- 
nant and  ingenious  opposition  as  did  the  Jesuits  from  the 
powwows  and  sorcerers,  —  the  Indian  practitioners  of  divi- 
nation and  medicine,  —  they  felt  the  effect  of  it,  and  had 
difficulty  in  reasoning  it  away.  The  Indians,  whose  whole 
resource  for  aid  in  their  troubles  and  extremities  had  been 


436  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

in  their  powwows,  feared  that  if  these  fell  into  discredit  or 
disuse,  in  any  case  of  emergency  in  the  future  in  which 
the  help  of  white  men  should  fail  them  they  would  be  with- 
out relief.  Eliot  wrote  to  England  to  invite  over  doctors 
and  surgeons  for  them,  with  appliances  and  drugs,  and 
thought  it  desirable  that  they  should  have  lectures,  with  the 
help  of  an  "  atomy,"  or  skeleton.  In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Boyle, 
he  wrote :  "  I  have  some  thoughts,  if  God  give  life  and 
means,  to  read  medicine,  and  call  for  such  roots  —  for  they 
altogether  use  the  root,  and  not  the  herb  —  as  they  have 
experience  of."  His  chief  difficulty,  however,  came  from 
the  apprehensions,  the  distrust,  and  in  many  cases  the  posi- 
tive hostility  of  most  of  the  sachems,  sagamores,  and  grades 
of  chieftains  among  the  Indians.  These  apprehended  that 
they  would  henceforward  be  deprived  of  the  tribute  which 
they  had  been  wont  to  receive  or  to  exact  from  their  peo- 
ple. Eliot  tried  to  act  as  a  fair  umpire  in  this  matter, 
enjoining  that  the  tribute  due  as  such  to  chiefs  should  be 
continued,  though  qualified  and  reduced  according  to  cir- 
cumstances. While  concentrating  his  labors  at  Natick, 
and  dividing  them  among  some  half-dozen  other  Indian 
settlements  soon  initiated,  he  sought  to  make  his  move- 
ment one  of  wider  compass,  at  least  to  other  New  England 
tribes ;  but  his  success  was  slight.  The  famous  King 
Philip,  taking  hold  of  one  of  Eliot's  coat-buttons,  told  him 
he  cared  no  more  for  his  religion  than  for  that ;  and  Uncas. 
sachem  of  the  Mohicans,  utterly  forbade  any  proselyting 
work  among  his  Indians.  Roger  Williams,  in  a  letter 
to  the  Commissioners  of  the  United  Colonies,  in  1654, 
wrote  that  in  his  recent  visit  to  England  he  had  been 
charged  by  the  Narragansett  sachems  to  petition  Cromwell 
and  the  Council  in  their  behalf,  that  they  should  not  be 
compelled  to  change  their  religion. 

The  Charles  River  —  sometimes  fordable,  sometimes 
swollen  —  ran  through  "the  place  of  hills,"  which  Eliot 
and  his  guides  had  chosen  for  their  experiment  in  u  cohabi- 


INDIAN   TOWN   AT   NATICK.  437 

tation  and  civility."  The  bounds  of  the  plantation  were 
laid  out  by  the  Court  in  1652.  Mainly  by  the  labor  of  the 
Indians,  a  strong,  arched  foot-bridge,  eighty  feet  long  and 
eight  feet  high,  had  been  thrown  over  the  stream,  with 
its  pilings  heavily  laden  with  stone.  Proud  were  its  rude 
builders  when  it  stood  through  the  frost  and  freshets  of  the 
next  season,  which  wrecked  a  bridge  built  by  the  English 
over  the  same  stream  at  Medfield.  Three  wide  parallel 
streets  ran,  two  on  one  side  and  one  on  the  other  side  of 
the  stream,  through  the  projected  village ;  and  the  territory 
was  portioned  into  lots,  with  walls  and  fencing,  for  houses, 
tillage,  and  pasturage.  Fruit-trees  were  planted,  and  a 
palisaded  fort  enclosed  a  meeting-house  fifty  feet  long, 
twenty-five  broad,  and  twelve  high,  built  of  squared  timber 
after  the  English  fashion,  with  sills  and  plates,  mortises 
and  tenons,  and  a  chimney.  The  Indians  had  no  other  aid 
in  this  work  than  that  of  an  English  carpenter  for  two 
days.  The  lower  story  was  to  be  used  for  a  school  and  for 
preaching  and  worship,  and  the  loft  for  a  place  for  keeping 
furs  and  garments,  and  for  a  bed-room  for  Eliot.  Wilson, 
the  Boston  pastor,  describes  the  scene  when  he  was  present 
at  a  lecture.  He  says  the  women  and  the  men  sat  apart 
on  benches,  there  being  about  one  hundred  Indians,  "  most, 
if  not  all,  clad  in  English  apparel,"  and  thirty  English. 
The  place  soon  began  to  wear  the  aspect  of  industry  and 
thrift,  and  to  offer  the  comforts  and  securities  of  household 
life,  with  fields  fenced  and  broken  for  crops,  and  fruit-trees 
set  in  the  ground.  The  Indians  preferred  to  construct 
their  dwellings  in  their  own  style  ;  but  cleanliness  and  a 
regard  for  decency  were  strictly  required  of  them.  A  sort 
of  magistracy  among  themselves  was  established  in  the 
autumn.  Eliot,  throughout  his  plan,  followed  the  theo- 
cratic model  after  which  the  colonists  themselves  were 
self-governed.  He  directed  the  Indians  to  choose  among 
themselves  ten  rulers  of  tens,  two  of  fifties,  and  one  of  a 
hundred,  by  the  Scripture  pattern.  On  Sept.  24,  1651, 


438  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

they  solemnly,  after  prayer  and  counsel  and  exhortation, 
entered  "  into  covenant  with  God  and  each  other  to  be 
the  Lord's  people,  and  to  be  governed  by  the  word  of  the 
Lord  in  all  things."  In  the  mean  time  diligent  efforts 
were  in  progress  for  the  primer  and  catechetical  training 
of  children,  for  their  education  in  English,  and  for  the 
preparation  in  school,  and  even  in  college,  of  promising 
natives  for  teaching  and  preaching. 

From  the  first  tokens  of  hopeful  promise  and  possible 
ultimate  success  in  his  arduous  work,  Eliot  began  to  cheer 
himself  with  the  joy  which  he  should  realize  in  setting 
before  him,  as  a  crowning  result,  the  establishment  in  ex- 
clusive Indian  towns  of  the  perfected  idea  of  the  Puritan 
church.  This  required  a  company  of  covenanted  believers, 
men  and  women,  "  saints  by  profession  and  in  the  judgment 
of  charity,"  keeping  strictly  the  Sabbath  and  the  ordinances, 
with  teachers  of  their  own  race,  educated,  consecrated,  and 
duly  ordained,  and  in  communion  with  sister  churches. 
The  pastor  of  an  Indian  church  should  be  such,  in  attain- 
ment, ability,  and  piety,  as  would  put  him  on  an  equality, 
certainly  for  all  official  functions  and  regards,  with  the 
ministers  of  the  English.  Communicants  should  be  re- 
ceived, as  among  the  whites,  on  giving  satisfactory  evidence 
of  their  conversion,  their  conviction  of  sin,  their  spiritual 
experience  and  renewal,  and  their  sincere  purpose  to  lead 
a  consistent,  godly  life,  observing  all  the  then  requisite  con- 
ditions and  methods,  —  prayer  and  Bible-reading  daily  in 
their  families,  grace  at  meals,  and  the  religious  training  of 
their  children  and  households.  The  brethren  and  sisters 
thus  covenanted  together  were  to  have  a  rigid  watch  and 
ward  over  each  other,  jealously  guarding  themselves  against 
reproach  or  scandal,  keeping  all  wrong-doers  in  awe,  at- 
tracting the  well-disposed,  and.  proving  themselves  a  body 
of  the  elect.  Only  the  children  of  covenanted  parents 
should  be  baptized,  and  the  gifted  of  the  flock  were  to  be 
encouraged  "  to  exercise  in  prayer  and  exhortation." 


SECLUSION   OF   THE   INDIANS.  439 

But  all  this  was  prospective,  in  the  future.  The  more 
fervently  it  was  desired  and  aimed  after,  the  more  wisely 
and  diligently  should  every  intervening  step  and  condition 
be  regarded.  With  all  his  zeal  and  fervor,  and  his  clear 
apprehension  of  his  final  object  which  alone  would  be  suc- 
cess, Eliot  was  a  most  patient,  sagacious,  and  methodical 
overseer  of  his  own  work.  He  thoughtfully  and  prudently 
kept  in  view  all  needful  conditions  and  preliminaries ;  he 
was  content  with  very  slow  progress ;  he  calmly  met  all 
obstacles,  and  gently  treated  all  mistrusts ;  and  he  did 
not  hurry  to  anticipate  the  result.  Companies  of  his  con- 
verts, after  he  had  catechised  and  preached  to  them  for  a 
little  more  than  a  year,  began  to  importune  him  for  an  en- 
trance upon  full  Christian  standing  and  privileges.  Kindly, 
and  with  reasons  which  seemed  to  convince,  he  postponed  the 
solemn  work  which  they  would  have  hastened.  It  proved 
to  be  four  years  before  he  and  they  were  fully  gratified. 

He  felt  that  he  had  planned  wisely  in  planting  the  Indian 
towns  as  remote  from  those  of  the  English  as  would  con- 
sist with  the  occasional  intercourse  needful  for  their  over- 
sight and  direction.  One  very  desirable  end  he  thought 
would  thus  be  secured,  in  restraining  what  had  come  to  be 
realized  as  a  troublesome  and  dangerous  evil,  —  the  Iditering 
of  Indians,  as  vagabonds  or  pilferers,  on  the  skirts  of  the 
English  towns.  Even  the  belt  of  them  had  so  far  only  in- 
termitted spasmodic  periods  of  labor  for  themselves,  or  on 
wages  for  the  whites  in  harvest-time,  with  wide  wilderness 
roamings.  So  long  as  they  pursued  this  course  they  could 
not  be  held  to  the  social  and  legal  obligations  of  a  commu- 
nity, much  less  to  the  rules  of  Christian  morality  and 
church  discipline.  As  soon  as  it  was  thought  safe  to  do 
so,  what  may  be  called  the  municipal  concerns  of  the 
Indian  settlements  and  the  adjudication  of  petty  issues 
between  man  and  man  were  administered  by  some  among 
themselves.  English  magistrates  were  appointed  by  the 
Court  to  make  periodical  visits,  to  dispose  of  more  impor- 


440  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

taut  causes.  In  1656  the  Court  chose  and  commissioned 
Mr.  Daniel  Gookiii  to  have  the  general  oversight,  as  magis- 
trate, of  all  the  Indian  towns.  He  sympathized  warmly 
with  the  plans  and  labors  of  Eliot,  was  a  man  of  great 
purity  and  nobleness  of  heart,  of  excellent  judgment  and 
exemplary  patience,  and  became  the  most  steadfast  friend 
under  severe  discomfitures  and  trials  of  those  who  were 
committed  to  his  charge.  His  office  and  work  proved  as 
exacting  as  those  of  Eliot. 

The  Society  incorporated  by  the  English  Parliament  for 
obtaining  and  administering  funds  for  these  gospel  labors 
among  the  Indians  drew  to  it  many  and  very  liberal 
friends.  Its  income  came  to  amount  to  six  or  seven  hun- 
dred pounds.  The  Commissioners  of  the  United  Colonies 
were,  by  provision  of  its  charter,  in  relations  of  correspond- 
ence and  advice  with  its  officers,  and  were  intrusted  with 
the  disbursing  of  its  funds.  Communications  were  sent 
over  from  Boston  in  a  steady  succession,  reporting  each 
stage  of  hopefulness  and  promise  in  the  work,  with  full 
and  minute  information.  These  were  indorsed  by  Presby- 
terian and  Independent  ministers  in  and  near  London, 
commended  to  the  notice  of  the  Puritan  Parliament,  and 
printed.  Indifference,  mistrust,  and  opposition  to  the  cause 
as  useless  or  overstated  occasionally  manifested  themselves, 
but  were  met  and  silenced. 1  * 

The  funds  were  to  be  used  for  various  specified  purposes, 
—  salaries  of  ministers,  interpreters,  and  school-teachers, 
the  building  of  an  Indian  college  at  Cambridge  and  the  sup- 
port of  native  pupils  and  scholars,  the  purchase  of  clothing 
and  books,  etc.  The  Records  of  the  Commissioners  give 
evidence  that  there  was  some  little  friction  in  their  agency 

1  The  series  of  publications  reporting  the  progress  of  Eliot's  work,  under 
titles  indicative  of  the  advance  from  dawn  and  daylight  towards  full  noon,  are, 
in  their  original  issue,  exceedingly  rare,  and  are  rated  at  extravagant  values  by 
bibliophilists.  Most  of  them  have  been  reprinted  in  the  Collections  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  and  they  make  together  a  unique  class  of 
literature. 


ELIOT'S   FAITH   AND   PERSEVERANCE.  441 

as  correspondents  with  the  English  Society,  in  overseeing 
the  work  and  distributing  and  accounting  for  the  funds,  as 
they  were  thus  brought  into  delicate  relations  with  Eliot. 
The  Commissioners  preferred  that  he  should  make  report 
of  his  work  through  them,  and  not  by  any  private  letters ; 
and  that  all  gifts  to  him  should  pass  through  their  hands, 
or  be  within  their  knowledge.  He  began  his  labors  and 
accomplished  some  of  the  most  difficult  parts  of  them  un- 
aided and  at  his  own  charges.  He  afterwards  received  a 
salary,  first  of  £20,  then  of  <£40,  and  finally  of  <£50,  from 
the  funds  of  the  Society. 

An  illustration  here  presents  itself  of  the  mighty  solvent 
power  of  that  faith,  common  so  far  to  the  Puritan  and  the 
Jesuit  missionary,  which  could  so  readily  distribute  the  al- 
ternations of  promise  and  disappointment  in  the  stages  of 
their  work,  assigning  the  encouragements  to  God  and  the 
discouragements  to  Satan.  Thus,  in  connection  with  the 
active  and  costly  enterprise  at  Natick,  the  English  Society 
had  been  enlisted  to  send  over  large  quantities  of  farming 
tools  and  implements  of  industry  and  household  thrift, 
clothing,  etc.  A  vessel  laden  with  these  was  on  its  way, 
and  Eliot  had  quickened  the  hearts  of  the  Indians  by  tell- 
ing them  what  warm  and  generous  friends  God  had  raised 
up  for  them  across  the  sea.  The  vessel  was  wrecked  with 
great  losses  on  Cohasset  rocks,  though  some  of  its  freight 
was  saved  in  a  damaged  condition.  "  Satan  wrecked  the 
vessel,  but  God  rescued  some  of  its  contents."  Again,  on 
the  eve  of  the  occasion  appointed  for  instituting  a  church 
at  Natick,  "  three  Indians  of  the  unsound  sort  had  got 
several  quarts  of  strong  water."  The  natural  consequen- 
ces followed.  Of  this  Eliot  says  :  "  There  fell  out  a  very 
great  discouragement,  which  might  have  been  a  scandal  to 
them,  and  I  doubt  not  but  Satan  intended  it  so ;  but  the 
Lord  improved  it  to  stir  up  faith  and  prayer,  and  so  turned  it 
another  way."  Mighty  indeed  is  that  assuring  trust  which 
can  thus  allot  the  bane  and  the  blessing  of  human  life  ! 


442  MISSIONARY  EFFORTS   AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

To  the  communications  made  from  time  to  time  by  Eliot 
for  the  sake  of  their  being  printed  by  the  Society  in  Eng- 
land, in  order  to  draw  confidence  and  funds  to  the  mission 
work,  he  generally  attached  some  interesting  matter  indi- 
cating the  active  intelligence  of  his  Indian  disciples.  As 
has  been  said,  one  of  the  exercises  in  Eliot's  religious  ser- 
vices on  his  visits  to  Natick  was  his  allowing  and  prompt- 
ing his  hearers  to  ask  him  any  questions  which  seriously 
sprung  up  in  their  own  minds,  as  they  tried  to  understand 
and  appropriate  his  teachings.  We  know  how  fruitful  the 
creed  of  Calvin,  and  doctrines  drawn  from  the  Puritan  es- 
timate and  mode  of  using  the  Bible  —  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  Scriptures  —  have  been  in  puzzles  for  the  brains 
of  civilized  and  well-trained  men  and  women.  It  is  not 
strange  that  the  savages  found  in  them  riddles  and  perplex- 
ities. The  Jesuit  put  foremost  to  his  more  docile  disciples 
the  creed,  the  authority,  and  symbols  of  his  church,  thus 
leaving  to  a  reduced  and  secondary  place  of  importance 
the  promptings  of  the  reasoning  faculty  on  speculative  and 
didactic  points.  But  the  Puritan  stirred  a  spirit  of  dispu- 
tation, with  which  he  found  it  difficult  to  deal.  Eliot,  how- 
ever, with  kind  and  honest  frankness  indulged  the  liberty 
which  he  had  offered.  So  he  was  wont  to  append  to  his 
communications  to  his  English  patrons  some  of  the  ques- 
tions which  came  to  his  mind  when  he  wrote,  as  having 
been  put  to  him  by  the  Indians.  He  says :  "  They  are  fruit- 
ful that  way,"  though  some  of  them  ask  "  weak  questions, 
which  I  mention  not ;  you  have  the  best."  The  excellent 
Gookin,  who  was  often  present,  writes :  "  Divers  of  them 
had  a  faculty  to  frame  hard  and  difficult  questions,  touch- 
ing something  then  spoken,  or  some  other  matter  in  reli- 
gion, tending  to  their  illumination;  which  questions  Mr. 
Eliot,  in  a  grave  and  Christian  manner,  did  endeavor  to 
resolve  and  answer  to  their  satisfaction." 

It  was  altogether  natural  that  the  Indians,  being  so  posi- 
tively told  by  those  who  seemed  to  have  knowledge  in  the 


THE   INDIANS   IN   ARGUMENT.  443 

case,  that  they  were  the  natural  bond-subjects  of  Satan  in 
life  and  in  death,  and  being  generally  treated  by  the  Eng- 
lish in  conformity  with  this  teaching,  should  be  especially 
interested  in  learning  all  they  could  about  their  dark,  spir- 
itual adversary.  So  most  of  their  questions  had  reference 
to  him  and  his  unseen  realm.  They  asked,  "  If  there 
might  not  be  something,  if  only  a  little,  gained  by  praying 
to  him  ?  "  "  Whether  the  Devil  or  man  was  made  first  ?  " 
"  Why  does  not  God,  having  full  power,  kill  the  Devil,  that 
makes  all  men  so  bad  ?  "  "  Why  do  Englishmen  so  eagerly 
kill  all  snakes  ? "  "  If  God  made  Hell  in  one  of  the  six 
days,  why  did  he  make  Hell  before  Adam  had  sinned?" 
"If  all  the  world  be  burned  up,  where  shall  Hell  be  then?" 
"  If  all  the  Indians  already  dead  were  in  Hell,  and  only  a 
few  now  in  the  way  of  getting  to  Heaven  ?  "  Some  of  their 
queries  showed  no  slight  skill  in  casuistry.  Eliot,  insisting 
that  his  disciples  should  have  but  one  wife,  was  asked,  "  If 
an  Indian  have  two  wives,  the  first  without,  the  second 
with  children,  which  of  them  shall  he  put  away  ?  If  he 
renounces  the  first,  then  he  wrongs  the  one  who  has  the 
strongest  claim  upon  him.  If  he  discards  the  second,  then 
he  breaks  a  living  tie,  and  makes  his  children  bastards." 
"  If  one  man  sins  knowingly  and  another  ignorantly,  will 
God  punish  both  alike  ?"  "  If  God  loves  those  who  turn  to 
him,  why  does  he  ever  afflict  them  after  they  have  turned 
to  him?"  "Why  did  not  God  give  all  men  good  hearts, 
that  they  might  be  good?"  "When  Christ  arose,  whence 
came  his  soul  ?  "  When  Eliot  answered  "  from  Heaven,"  it 
was  replied,  "  How  then  was  Christ  punished  in  our  stead, 
afore  death,  or  after?"  "Whither  their  little  children  go 
when  they  die,  seeing  they  have  not  sinned  ?  "  Eliot  says, 
"  This  gave  occasion  to  teach  them  more  fully  original  sin, 
and  the  damned  state  of  all  men.  I  could  give  them  no 
further  comfort  than  that  when  God  elects  the  parents,  he 
elects  their  seed  also."  "  If  a  man  should  be  inclosed  in 
iron  a  foot  thick,  and  thrown  into  the  fire,  what  would 


444  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

become  of  his  soul  ?  Whether  could  the  soul  come  forth 
thence,  or  not  ? "  There  is  a  singular  beauty  in  one  of  the 
questions  put  by  these  pupils  of  natural  religion :  "  Can  one 
be  saved  by  reading  the  Book  of  the  Creature  [Nature]  ?  " 
Eliot  says,  "  This  question  was  made  when  I  taught  them 
that  God  gave  us  two  books,  and  that  in  the  Book  of  the 
Creature  every  creature  was  a  word  or  sentence." 

A  specimen  of  the  "  weak  questions "  is  the  following : 
"  What  shall  be  in  the  room  of  the  world  when  it  is  burnt 
up?"  Eliot  calls  this  "an  old  woman's  question,  yester- 
day." The  women  were  allowed  to  ask  questions  through 
their  husbands,  —  not  always,  either  in  savage  or  civilized 
life,  a  satisfactory  medium. 

Only  once  does  there  seem  to  have  been  trifling.  Eliot 
says,  "  We  had  this  year  a  malignant,  drunken  Indian,  that 
(to  cast  some  reproach,  as  we  feared,  upon  this  way)  boldly 
pronounced  this  question :  4  Mr.  Eliot,  who  made  sack,  who 
made  sack  ? '  [the  word  for  all  strong  drinks] .  But  he  was 
soon  snibbed  [snubbed  ?]  by  the  other  Indians  calling  it  '  a 
pappoose  question,'  and  seriously  and  gravely  answered,  not 
so  much  to  his  question  as  to  his  spirit,  which  hath  cooled 
his  boldness  ever  since." 

This  wicked  Indian,  named  George,  seems  to  have  been  a 
sad  reprobate.  He  killed  and  skinned  a  young  cow  belong- 
ing to  a  settler  in  Cambridge,  and  had  the  effrontery  to 
pass  it  off  as  "  a  moose "  to  Mr.  Dunster,  the  President  of 
the  College,  "  and  covered  it  with  many  lies."  He  was 
"  convented  before  an  assembly  of  the  elders,"  and  made 
confession,  which  was  kindly  received. 

Patience,  gentleness,  and  dialectic  skill  must  have  been 
equally  needed  by  the  good  Apostle  under  these  question- 
ings. Supposing  his  readers  well  furnished  at  such  points, 
he  does  not  give  us  his  answers. 

Eliot  made  several  distinctly  marked  stages  of  his  work 
in  the  process  of  preparing  his  flock  at  Natick  for  and  ad- 
mitting them  to  the  full  privileges  of  what  he  calls  "  a 


INDIAN  MUNICIPALITY.  445 

Church  estate."  He  and  they  looked  longingly  forward  to 
that  crowning  result.  The  most  earnest  of  his  converts 
were  anxious  to  be  put  upon  the  same  level  with  the  Eng- 
lish in  the  coveted  enjoyment  of  all  ecclesiastical  rights  and 
ordinances.  He  was  himself  naturally  deliberate  and  scru- 
pulous in  avoiding  all  haste  and  in  making  sure  of  his 
ground.  There  were  additional  reasons  also  for  hesitancy 
and  delay  in  the  case,  furnished  by  the  jealousy,  the  linger- 
ing prejudices,  and  the  still  unreconciled  opposition  of  some 
of  his  own  brethren.  English  pride  and  self-respect,  and 
watchfulness  for  the  dignity  of  the  Puritan  institutions, 
would  keep  careful  guard  over  all  the  preliminaries  for  the 
recognition  of  a  Church  composed  of  natives.  Stragglers 
and  groups  of  them  occasionally  attended  upon  the  Sabbath 
assemblies  of  the  whites,  with  uncertain  edification,  under- 
standing but  little,  and  not  always  welcome,  —  though  in- 
vited, and  even  constrained  to  come.  The  best  of  them 
might  well  realize  that  any  good  they  were  to  derive  from 
such  services  could  be  secured  only  when  they  met  to  wor- 
ship by  themselves,  with  "  exercises  "  in  their  own  language. 
Perhaps  curiosity,  novelty,  and  the  love  of  imitation  had 
their  influence.  As  the  Indians  became  impatient  at  the 
deferring  of  the  consummation  of  their  wishes,  Eliot  most 
wisely  improved  the  opportunity  by  efforts  to  keep  them 
steadfast,  and  to  reconcile  them  to  the  delay  by  making 
sure  of  the  gains  already  reached.  It  was  hard  to  wean 
them  from  a  roaming  life  and  to  accustom  them  to  that 
fixed  residence,  "  cohabitation,"  which  was  the  prime  essen- 
tial to  religious  discipline  and  a  covenanted  religion.  They 
must  dwell  together  if  they  would  be  "  a  people  with  whom 
the  Lord  would  delight  to  dwell."  One  stage  in  the  tedious 
and  responsible  work  had  been  secured  in  the  measure  al- 
ready noticed,  by  which  the  families  occupying  the  fifty  lots 
in  the  new  town  had  entered  into  a  civil  compact,  after  the 
model  of  the  Jewish  Theocracy.  One  of  the  laws  which 
they  had  themselves  made,  of  course  under  Eliot's  prompt- 


446  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

ing,  was  in  these  words :  "  All  those  men  that  wear  long 
hair  shall  pay  five  shillings."  Eliot  says  "  they  had  a 
vain  pride  in  their  hair,"  so  that  the  sacrifice  was  a  hard 
one.  He  himself  was  sturdily  opposed  to  the  wigs  worn  by 
his  own  brethren.  In  the  summer  of  1652,  Eliot  began  to 
pursue,  with  a  few  of  the  most  promising  of  the  male  In- 
dians, precisely  the  same  process  by  which  in  his  own 
Puritan  church  individuals  in  the  congregation  from  time 
to  time  became  members  in  full  communion.  And  he 
followed  this  method  with  even  more  formality  in  every 
subsequent  step  of  the  process.  He  drew  from  some  half- 
dozen  of  his  converts  what  are  called  "confessions," — re- 
lations of  private  religious  experience.  These  he  translated 
and  wrote  down,  and  then  submitted  to  a  meeting  of  his 
own  ministerial  brethren.  Oct.  16,  1652,  was  appointed 
for  their  assembling  at  Natick  on  a  day  of  solemn  fasting 
and  prayer,  for  the  hearing  of  further  "  confessions,"  which 
were  to  be  formally  interpreted,  opportunity  being  given 
for  searching  examination  of  them.  These  confessions, 
with  an  accompanying  narrative,  were  sent  to  England  and 
published  in  the  interest  of  the  Society  which  fostered  the 
Indian  missionary  work.  Eliot  waited  for  the  receipt  of 
some  of  these  tracts  from  England,  that  the  circulation  of 
them  might  reassure  the  confidence  of  friends  here  and  re- 
move what  still  remained  of  doubt  or  opposition  to  his  work 
and  purpose.  He  had  another  reason  for  delay,  as  "  the 
waters  were  troubled "  by  threatening  of  war  with  the 
Dutch  neighbors,  and  it  seemed  wise  to  wait  for  calmer 
seas.  Eliot  availed  himself  of  the  occasion  of  a  great 
gathering  in  Boston,  on  a  meeting  of  the  Commissioners  of 
the  colonies,  to  bring  his  cause  before  the  assembled  elders, 
with  the  book  of  confessions.  He  asked  for  their  approval 
of  his  proceeding  to  admit  his  Indians  to  a  "  Church  es- 
tate," and  induced  them  to  attend  upon  a  solemn  meeting 
to  be  held  at  Roxbury  in  July,  1654,  for  hearing  the  con- 
fessions of  some  of  his  candidates  from  Natick,  to  be  se- 


EXAMINATION   OF   CONVERTS.  447 

lected  by  himself.  To  insure  impartiality  in  interpretation, 
Mayhew  came  to  help  him.  The  natives  gave  to  the  ap- 
pointed day  the  term  Natootomuhteac,  "  the  day  of  exami- 
nation ; "  and  they  were  advised  to  prepare  themselves  for  it 
by  private  religious  exercises.  A  public  fast  occurred  in 
the  interval,  which  those  natives  observed.  Eliot  suffered 
just  at  this  time  a  dreadful,  staggering  blow,  which  almost 
disheartened  him.  As  with  hopeful  heart  he  was  mounting 
his  horse,  ten  days  before  the  set  occasion,  to  prepare  his 
candidates,  word  was  brought  to  him  that  three  drunken 
Indians  had  drawn  into  their  revels  the  son  of  one  of  his 
foremost  disciples.  He  was  the  more  distressed  because, 
as  he  says,  one  of  the  culprits,  "  though  the  least  in  the 
offence,  was  he  that  hath  been  my  interpreter,  whom  I  have 
used  in  translating  a  good  part  of  the  Holy  Scriptures ;  and 
in  that  respect  I  saw  much  of  Satan's  venom,  and  in  God  I 
saw  displeasure.  I  lay  him  by  for  that  day  of  our  examina- 
tion, and  used  another  in  his  room."  The  men  were  judged 
by  their  own  local  magistrates,  put  in  the  stocks,  arid 
whipped  at  a  tree.  The  boy  was  put  in  the  stocks  for  a 
short  time,  and  then  whipped  by  his  father  in  the  school. 

When  the  great  day  came,  Eliot  proceeded  with  the 
utmost  deliberation,  with  full  caution,  and  charming  can- 
dor. He  wished  to  secure  a  rigidly  fair  interpretation  and 
a  clear  understanding  of  the  candidates  by  the  elders,  so 
that  all  should  be  scanned  and  tried.  "  For  my  desire  was 
to  be  true  to  Christ,  to  their  souls,  and  to  the  churches." 
Eight  candidates  were  examined,  and  we  have  the  proceed- 
ings in  full  in  one  of  the  London  tracts.  Eliot  frankly 
said,  as  to  the  subjects  of  his  efforts  in  general,  "  We  know 
the  profession  of  very  many  of  them  is  but  a  mere  paint, 
and  their  best  graces  nothing  but  mere  flashes  and  pangs." 
If,  according  to  the  literalism  of  the  Puritan  faith,  the 
names  of  all  true  covenanted  Christians  are  written  in  the 
"  Lamb's  book  of  life,"  there  may  be  found  upon  it  the  names 
of  the  following  members  of  the  fold  in  Natick :  Tother- 


448  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE  INDIANS. 

swamp,  Waban,  Nataous,  Monequassum  (the  native  school- 
master, who  could  spell,  read,  and  write,  then  wasting  in 
consumption),  Ponampam,  Peter  ("  a  ruler  of  ten,  a  godly 
man,"  who  soon  after  died  in  sanctity),  John  Speen,  Robin 
Speen,  Nishohkon,  Magus,  Poquanum,  Nookan,  Antony, 
Owussumag,  and  Ephraim.,  Eliot  says  the  Indians  were 
abashed  in  making  their  confessions.  The  hearing  of  them 
deliberately  spoken  and  then  interpreted,  must  have  been 
a  tedious  trial  of  patience  to  some  of  the  English  listeners, 
"who  whispered  and  went  out."  Eliot  says,  "These  things 
did  make  the  work  longsome,  considering  the  enlargement 
of  spirit  God  gave  some  of  them."  Sunset  was  near  before 
the  close.  "  The  place  being  remote  in  the  woods,  the 
nights  long  and  cold,  and  people  not  fitted  to  lie  abroad, 
and  no  competent  lodgings  in  the  place  for  such  persons, 
and  the  work  of  such  moment  as  would  not  admit  of  hud- 
dling up  in  haste," — it  was  concluded  not  to  complete  it  on 
that  day.  The  Indians  were  disappointed  ;  but  Eliot  com- 
forted them,  as  the  elders  did  him,  with  just  praise  and 
encouragement.  The  poor  man  needed  all  sympathy  and 
cheer.  He  says  he  "  missed  some  words  of  weight  in  some 
sentences,  —  partly  by  my  short  and  curt  touches  of  what 
they  more  fully  spake,  and  partly  by  reason  of  the  different 
idioms  of  their  language  and  ours."  The  schoolmaster 
especially,  in  his  confession,  had  the  "enlargement  of 
spirit."  "  The  graver  sort  thought  the  time  long ;  there- 
fore, knowing  he  had  spoken  enough  (at  least  as  I  judged), 
I  here  took  him  off.  Then  one  of  the  elders  asked  if  I 
took  him  off,  or  whether  had  he  finished.  I  answered  that 
I  took  him  off.  So  after  my  reading  what  he  had  said,  we 
called  another." 

These  "  confessions  "  doubtless  suffered  in  the  interpre- 
tation. They  are  juiceless  and  parrot-like,  formal,  con- 
strained, and  technical,  wholly  lacking  in  the  unique  and 
picturesque  originality  of  the  Indian  speech.  They  are  for 
the  most  part  accounts  of  thoughts  or  impressions  ascribed 


ELIOT'S  WORK  IN  TRANSLATION.  449 

to  a  text  on  which  Eliot  had  preached,  or  suggested  by 
something  he  had  said. 

It  was  not  until  1660  that  a  church  of  native  members 
was  instituted  after  the  Puritan  pattern  at  Natick.  On  the 
occasion,  of  which  we  do  not  know  the  date,  Eliot  offici- 
ated, baptized  the  candidates,  and  administered  the  Lord's 
Supper. 

It  would  seem  that  the  great  accomplishment  of  Mr. 
Eliot's  life,  growing  out  of  his  missionary  work,  —  the 
translation  of  the  Scriptures  entire,  —  so  far  from  having 
entered  into  his  original  plans,  had  been  regarded  by  him 
as  impossible.  In  a  letter  to  Winslow,  in  England,  June 
8,  1649,  he  wrote  :  — 

"  I  do  very  much  desire  to  translate  some  parts  of  the  Scripture 
into  their  language,  and  to  print  some  primer  in  their  language, 
wherein  to  initiate  and  teach  them  to  read,  which  some  of  the  men 
do  much  also  desire,  and  printing  such  a  thing  will  be  troublesome 
and  chargeable ;  and  having  yet  but  little  skill  in  their  language, 
—  having  little  leisure  to  attend  it,  by  reason  of  my  continual 
attendance  on  my  ministry  in  my  own  church,  —  I  must  have  some 
Indians,  it  may  be,  and  other  help  continually  about  me  to  try  and 
examine  translations,  which  I  look  at  as  a  sacred  and  holy  work, 
and  to  be  regarded  with  much  fear,  care,  and  reverence ;  and  all 
this  is  chargeable  :  therefore  I  look  at  that  as  a  special  matter  on 
which  cost  is  to  be  bestowed,  if  the  Lord  provide  means;  for  I  have 
not  means  of  my  own  for  it.  ^\  have  a  family  of  many  children  to 
educate,  and  therefore  I  cannot  give  over  my  ministry  in  our  own 
church,  whereby,"  etc. 

This  allusion  to  his  responsibilities,  as  the  head  of  a  fam- 
ily, reminds  us  of  the  different  conditions  under  which  Eliot 
and  a  Jesuit  labored  in  their  respective  fields.  Eliot  had 
a  daughter  and  five  sons.  All  these  five  sons  he  trained 
for  Harvard  College,  dedicating  them  all  to  the  Indian 
work.  One  of  them  died  in  his  college  course ;  the  other 
four  were  preachers,  one  being  his  assistant  at  Roxbury. 
The  daughter,  with  one  only  of  the  sons,  survived  the 
father.  He  writes  : — 

29 


450  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

"  Moreover,  there  be  sundry  prompt  and  pregnant  witted  youths 
—  not  viciously  inclined,  but  well-disposed  —  which  I  desire  mav 
be  wholly  sequestered  to  learning,  and  put  to  schools  for  that  pur- 
pose, had  we  means." 

In  1650  he  writes,  pleading  earnestly  for  help  to  support 
an  Indian  school :  — 

"  I  have  compiled  a  short  catechism,  and  wrote  it  in  the  master's 
[the  native  teacher's]  book,  which  he  can  read  and  teach  them ;  and 
also  all  the  copies  he  setteth  his  scholars  when  he  teacheth  them  to 
write  are  the  questions  and  answers  of  the  catechism,  that  so  the 
children  may  be  the  more  prompt  and  ready  therein.  We  aspire 
to  no  higher  learning  yet  but  to  spell,  read,  and  write,  that  so  they 
may  be  able  to  write  for  themselves  such  Scriptures  as  I  have  al- 
ready or  hereafter  may  (by  the  blessing  of  God)  translate  for  them  ; 
for  I  have  no  hope  to  see  the  Bible  translated,  much  less  printed, 
in  my  days." 

There  had  been  grammars  and  dictionaries  of  native 
languages  in  Spanish  America,  published  a  century  before 
Eliot  meditated  a  similar  work.  There  are  intimations  in 
the  correspondence  of  the  Commissioners,  as  agents  of  the 
Society  in  London,  that  they  feared  he  might  be  tempted  to 
print  some  of  his  translations  before  he  was  sufficiently 
skilled  in  the  native  tongue,  with  its  possible  variations 
of  dialect  even  with  New  England  tribes.  In  a  letter  to 
him  dated  Sept.  18, 1654,  they  say  :  — 

"We  desired  that  Thomas  Stanton's  [the  official  interpreter  in 
their  affairs  with  the  Indians]  help  might  have  been  used  in  the 
catechism  printed,  and  wish  that  no  inconvenience  be  found 
through  the  want  thereof.  And  shall  now  advise  that  before  you 
proceed  in  translating  the  Scriptures  or  any  part  of  them,  you  im- 
prove the  best  helps  the  country  affords  for  the  Indian  language, 
that,  if  it  may  be,  these  Southwestern  Indians  may  understand  and 
have  the  benefit  of  what  is  printed." 

Eliot,  in  his  sensitiveness,  misapprehended  the  intent  of 
this  advice,  for  at  the  meeting  of  the  Commissioners  in  the 
year  following,  in  a  reply  to  a  letter  from  him,  they  say  : 


ELIOT  AS   AN   INDIAN   SCHOLAR.  451 

"  The  Commissioners  never  forbade  you  to  translate  the  Scrip- 
tures for  preaching,  or  for  any  other  use  either  of  your  own  or  of 
your  hearers,  but  advised  that  what  you  meant  to  print  or  set  forth 
upon  the  Corporation  charge  might  be  done  with  such  consideration 
of  the  language  and  improvement  of  the  best  helps  to  be  had 
therein,  that  as  much  as  may  be  the  Indians  in  all  parts  of  New 
England  might  share  in  the  benefit ;  which  we  fear  they  cannot  so 
well  do  by  what  you  have  already  printed." 

Mr.  Abraham  Pierson,  of  Connecticut,  came  under  the 
patronage  of  the  Society  for  his  labor  and  skill  in  the  mas- 
tery of  the  Indian  language.  Fifteen  hundred  copies  of  an 
Indian  catechism  made  by  him,  printed  by  the  Society  in 
our  Cambridge  in  1659,  preceded  any  work  of  Eliot's.  The 
quaint  simplicity  of  Eliot's  remarks  at  the  close  of  his  In- 
dian Grammar,  also  printed  in  Cambridge,  1666,  makes 
them  worthy  of  being  copied  here  :  — 

"  I  have  now  finished  what  I  shall  do  at  present ;  and  in  a  word 
or  two,  to  satisfy  the  prudent  inquirer  how  I  found  out  these  new 
ways  of  grammar,  which  no  other  learned  language  (so  far  as  I 
know)  useth,  I  thus  inform  him.  God  first  put  into  my  heart  a 
compassion  over  their  poor  souls,  and  a  desire  to  teach  them  to  know 
Christ  and  to  bring  them  into  his  kingdom.  Then  presently  I  found 
out  (by  God's  wise  providence)  a  pregnant-witted  young  man,  who 
had  been  a  servant  in  an  English  house,  who  pretty  well  under- 
stood our  language  better  than  he  could  speak  it,  and  well  under- 
stood his  own  language,  and  hath  a  clear  pronunciation.  Him  I 
made  my  interpreter.  By  his  help  I  translated  the  Commandments, 
the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  many  texts  of  Scripture.  Also  I  compiled 
both  exhortations  and  prayers  by  his  help.  I  diligently  marked  the 
difference  of  their  grammar  from  ours.  When  I  found  the  way  of 
them,  I  would  pursue  a  word — a  noun,  a  verb — through  all  varia- 
tions I  could  think  of.  And  thus  I  came  at  it.  We  must  not  sit 
still  and  look  for  miracles.  Up,  and  be  doing  ;  and  the  Lord  will 
be  with  thee.  Prayer  and  pains,  through  faith  in  Christ,  will  do 
anything.  Nil  tarn  difficile  quod  non.  I  do  believe  and  hope  that 
the  gospel  shall  be  spread  to  all  the  ends  of  the  earth  and  to  the 
dark  corners  of  the  world  by  such  a  way,  and  by  such  instruments 


452  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG  THE  INDIANS. 

as  the  churches  shall  send  forth  for  that  end  and  purpose.  Lord 
hasten  those  good  days,  and  pour  out  that  good  spirit  upon  thy 
people !  Amen."  / 

One  cannot  but  wish  that  Eliot  might  have  had  for  his 
help  and  guidance  some  of  the  best  practical  hints  which 
the  science  of  phonography  has  in  recent  years  suggested 
in  the  way  of  simplicity  and  labor-saving  in  the  writing 
and  printing,  at  least,  of  a  language  which  as  yet  has  only 
been  spoken.  The  evidence  is  abundant  that  many  of  the 
English  teachers  acquired  great  facility  in  speaking  the 
Indian  language,  but  no  two  of  them,  in  attempting  to  put 
into  writing  a  page  or  a  single  sentence  of  it,  would  have 
fallen  upon  the  same  mode  of  spelling,  or  would  have  used 
the  same  number  or  order  of  the  letters  for  the  same  word. 
Indeed  the  field  was  an  admirable  one  for  the  trial  of  pho- 
nography. And  it  was  of  course  wholly  by  the  sound  that 
Eliot  was  guided  in  his  choice  and  collocation  of  letters  for 
a  word.  He  had  arbitrary  power  in  the  case.  Any  one 
who  mechanically  turns  over  the  pages  of  either  of  his  In- 
dian works  can  hardly  resist  the  conviction  that  he  might 
have  dispensed  with  a  considerable  number  both  of  the  con- 
sonants and  vowels  lavishly  used  by  him.  But  he  sought 
to  do  full  justice  to  those  large  elements  of  the  medium  of 
converse  among  his  disciples  which  he  found  to  consist  of 
gutturals  and  of  grunts.  Within  the  space  of  a  few  pages 
of  the  same  book  we  notice  the  words  aukooJcs  and  ohkukes, 
as  giving  the  name  of  the  stone-kettles  of  the  Indians. 
Either  of  a  dozen  other  collocations  of  letters  would  have 
served  equally  well  for  the  symbol  of  the  sound.  It  was  to 
his  great  relief  and  help  that  Eliot  learned  that  in  the 
structure  of  the  Indian  grammatical  forms  there  was  a  reg- 
ularity and  method  as  strict  and  systematic  as  in  those  of 
the  classical  languages,  though  quite  unlike  theirs.  Gender 
and  number,  moods  and  tenses,  direction,  relation,  etc., 
found  their  full  definition  in  augments  or  inflections.  As 
in  our  unskilled  ignorance  we  try  to  understand  anything 


INDIAN  LANGUAGE  IN   WRITING.  453 

in  Roger  Williams's  Key,  or  in  Eliot's  Grammar,  it  seems 
to  us  as  if  an  Indian  word  began  little  and  compact,  like 
one  of  their  own  pappooses,  and  then  grew  at  either  ex- 
tremity, and  thickened  in  the  middle,  and  extended  in  shape 
and  proportion  in  each  limb  and  member,  and  was  com- 
pleted with  a  feathered  head-knot,  —  thus  assimilating  each 
acquisition  of  knowledge  and  experience  as  well  as  of  food 
and  ornament.  Such  we  feel  sure  must  have  been  the  his- 
tory of  the  genesis  and  development  of  a  word  before  us  in 
forty-three  letters. 

The  Jesuit  Biard,  in  Acadia,  says  he  was  satisfied  with 
translating  into  Indian  "  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Salutation 
of  the  Virgin,  the  Creed,  the  Commandments  of  God  and 
of  the  Church,  with  a  short  explanation  of  the  Sacraments, 
and  some  Prayers,  for  this  is  all  the  theology  they  need." 
But  Eliot,  true  to  the  Puritan  idea  that  the  Bible  ought  to 
be  to  all  Christians  what  the  Church  was  to  the  Roman- 
ists, considered  that  the  seal  of  his  life's  work  and  the 
pledge  of  its  continuity  and  security  would  be  found  only 
in  a  complete  translation  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  of  both 
Testaments.  The  Puritan  made  no  discrimination  as  to  the 
divine  authority  or  edifying  use  of  one  or  another  portion 
of  those  writings.  The  Bible  was  one  book,  —  a  whole  in 
itself.  What  in  it  was  not  of  present  application  had  value 
as  authenticating  its  most  vital  and  essential  teachings.  So 
the  devoted  and  laborious  Apostle  gave  himself  to  the  task 
of  transferring  the  details  of  the  patriarchal  history,  of 
the  wars  in  Canaan,  of  the  Levitical  institutions  and  the 
tabernacle  worship,  of  the  genealogical  tables  of  Kings  and 
Chronicles,  and  of  the  burdens  of  the  Prophet,  as  well  as 
the  Psalms  of  aspiration  and  the  sweet  benedictions  and 
parables  of  Christ,  into  an  equivalent  in  the  barbarian 
tongue.  An  unskilled  person,  in  turning  over  the  pages  of 
the  Indian  Bible,  will  see  that  he  found  relief  from  what 
would  have  been  an  impossibility  had  he  felt  himself  bound 
to  give  an  Indian  equivalent  for  proper  names  and  techni- 


454  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

cal  terms  in  the  Scriptures,  by  simply  using  the  Bible  word 
and  adding  an  Indian  termination.  A  story  has  obtained 
currency,  that  when  Eliot  was  rendering  the  passage  in 
Judges  v.  28,  where  the  mother  of  Sisera  is  said  to  have 
"cried  through  the  lattice,"  after  much  perplexity  to 
find  an  Indian  word  for  lattice,  he  adopted  one  given 
him  by  a  native,  which,  to  his  amusement  and  regret,  he 
afterwards  found  signified  "  an  eel-pot."  The  story  is  a 
fiction.  In  both  editions  of  his  Old  Testament  the  word 
lattice  is  rendered  latticent,  —  the  English  fitted  with  an  In- 
dian termination,  though  it  is  said  that  the  word  is  Indian 
for  "  eel-pot "  by  haphazard.  It  is  in  evidence,  too,  that 
the  Indian  teachers  and  preachers  found  it  easy  and  pleas- 
ant to  use  his  Bible  for  all  the  purposes  for  which,  with 
such  zeal  and  toil,  he  had  labored  upon  it.  References  are 
frequent,  many  years  after,  in  the  decaying  Indian  towns, 
to  copies  of  the  book  which  showed  the  same  tokens  of 
having  been  conned  and  pored  over  with  the  reverential 
affection  lavished  upon  the  English  book  in  Puritan  house- 
holds. Eliot  made  two  catechisms,  one  for  younger  and 
one  for  older  scholars.  He  also  provided  a  simple  Indian 
primer.  He  translated  some  of  the  Psalms  into  Indian 
metre,  which  are  said  to  have  been  "  melodiously  im- 
proved "  by  his  disciples  in  their  worship.  His  transla- 
tions of  Baxter's  "  Call "  (1664)  and  of  the  "  Practice  of 
Piety"  (1665),  the  former  undertaken  at  the  request  of 
the  Hon.  Robert  Boyle,  were  in  the  same  service  of  the  style 
of  Puritan  religion  into  which  he  would  train  his  converts. 
After  his  grammar  appeared,  the  use  of  it  must  have  fur- 
nished facilities  alike  for  teachers  and  pupils.  It  would 
seem  that  two  editions  were  printed  of  most  if  not  of  all 
his  works. 

By  a  letter  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Society  in  London, 
of  date  May  18,  1661,  the  Commissioners  were  informed 
that  under  the  new  order  of  things,  in  the  restoration  of  the 
monarchy,  the  Parliament's  Corporation  was  dissolved  by 


PRINTING   OF   THE   INDIAN   BIBLE.  455 

legal  defect.  But  the  hope  was  confidently  expressed  that 
the  King  would  renew  it.  The  Commissioners  therefore 
availed  themselves  of  the  fact  that  Eliot's  translation  of  the 
New  Testament  was  about  to  issue  from  the  press  in  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  to  improve  it  to  a  good  purpose.  The  volume 
appeared  Sept.  5,  1661.  The  title  is,  "  Wusku  Wuttesta- 
mentum  Nul-Lordumun  Jesus  Christ  Nuppoquohwussuae- 
neumun."  The  Commissioners  had  a  dedication  prepared 
and  printed  in  several  copies,  offering  the  strange  work, 
with  their  homage,  to  Charles  II.,  as  appearing  in  the  first 
year  of  his  reign,  and  making  it  the  appropriate  medium  of 
their  petition  that  he  would  be  graciously  pleased  to  re- 
establish and  confirm  the  defunct  Corporation.  The  next 
year  brought  them  the  grateful  tidings  that  his  Majesty  had 
renewed  the  charter  under  a  prestige  which  drew  in  the 
patronage  of  "  many  of  the  nobility  and  other  persons  of 
quality."  The  materials  for  the  expensive  work  of  print- 
ing, and  Mr.  Marmaduke  Johnson,  as  overseer,  had  all  been 
furnished  by  the  Society.  The  Old  Testament,  having  been 
three  years  in  the  press,  engaging  the  constant  pains  of 
Eliot  and  his  assistants,  was  published  in  1663.  It  was 
bound  up  with  the  New  Testament,  with  a  Catechism,  and  a 
translation  in  metre  of  the  Psalms.  The  copy  that  was  sent 
to  the  King  was  elegantly  bound,  as  were  also  a  few  others 
in  London.  These  were  furnished  with  a  somewhat  fulsome 
dedication,  though  the  donors  might  well  find  pride  and 
satisfaction  in  their  offering.  In  inscribing  the  New  Testa- 
ment to  their  sovereign,  they  had  expressed  their  "  weak 
apprehensions  "  that  his  Majesty  had  "  a  greater  interest 
in  this  work  than  we  believe  is  generally  understood."  In 
dedicating  to  him  "  the  whole  Bible  "  in  the  language  of 
the  natives  of  New  England,  they  recognize  his  favor  in  the 
reincorporation  of  the  Society,  and  congratulate  him  as  be- 
ing the  first  European  sovereign  that  ever  received  such  a 
work,  with  such  "  a  superlative  lustre  "  upon  it,  from  his 
subjects.  There  were  a  thousand  copies  of  this  edition. 


456  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

In  1680  a  second  edition  of  the  New  Testament  was 
printed,  and  in  1685  another  edition  of  two  thousand  cop- 
ies of  the  Old  Testament  appeared,  to  supply  the  loss  in 
the  wreck  of  King  Philip's  war.  The  cost  of  this  second 
imprint  of  the  Bible  was  a  thousand  pounds.  Its  title  is, 
"  Mamusse  Wunneetupanatamwe  Up  Biblum  God  Naneeswe 
Nukkone  Testament  kah  wonk  Wusku  Testament."  Copies 
of  the  book  have  been  sold  recently  for  more  than  a  thou- 
sand dollars  each/  Generous  as  were  the  contributions  made 
in  England  to  this  work,  the  Commissioners  were  equally 
earnest  in  their  appeals  for  more,  and  needed  an  occasional 
reminder  from  the  officers  of  the  Society  that  their  funds 
were  limited.  It  is  somewhat  curious  to  note  a  fact  ap- 
pearing on  the  record,  that  these  officers  of  a  society  with 
the  King's  charter,  in  making  remittances  here  of  silver 
"  pieces  of  eight,"  —  Spanish  dollars, —  approve  the  rernint- 
ing  of  the  specie,  at  a  profit,  in  Boston,  in  contravention  of 
the  King's  prerogative. 

Father  J.  F.  Chaumonot,  who  spent  fifty  years  among  the 
fTurons,  made  a  dictionary  of  their  language  .which  has 
never  been  recovered.  Father  Sebastian  Raljle  made  a 
'vocabulary  of  the  Abnaki  tongue,  which,  as  jbne  of  the 
spoils  of  war,  was  seized  by  the  Massachusetts  soldiers,  and 
has  been  published  by  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Sciences.  Eliot's  Indian  Bible,  having  long  since  ceased 
to  serve  the  uses  of  piety,  —  except  as  the  very  sight  and 
history  of  it  will  ever  have  a  sacramental  power, —  has  a 
value  assigned  to  it  in  abstruse  philological  and  linguistic 
studies  by  such  scholars  as  Adelung,  Duponceau,  Pickering, 
Professor  Whitney,  and  Max  Miiller.  J 

What  would  have  been  the  later  working  and  the  con- 
tinuous and  final  results  of  the  experiment  put  on  trial 
among  the  Massachusetts  Indians,  if  left  to  a  natural  and 
peaceful  development,  fostered  and  not  obstructed,  is  cer- 
tainly a  question  of  interest.  But  it  would  seem  to  admit 
of  but  one  decision,  to  be  inferred  from  all  the  knowledge 


PROSPECTS  OP  SUCCESS.  457 

we  have  since  acquired  by  actual  trial  of  similar  experi- 
ments. Some  new  phases  and  complications  of  the  prob- 
lem of  the  co-existence  of  two  races  on  different  levels 
of  intelligence,  ability,  and  thrift,  —  living  in  immediate 
proximity,  the  inferior  overborne  by  the  superior,  —  would 
have  offered  more  intricate  issues  for  our  politics  and  more 
puzzling  perplexities  for  our  philanthropists.  The  calami- 
tous occurrences  soon  to  be  referred  to,  which  violently 
arrested  the  working  of  the  experiment  and  brought  most 
grievous  disappointment  to  Eliot,  while  entailing  bitter 
inflictions  on  the  Christian  Indians,  will  be  regarded  by 
different  persons  according  to  their  varying  judgments,  as 
either  merely  precipitating  a  foregone  conclusion  or  thwart- 
ing a  prospect  of  fair  promise.v  Mr.  Gookin,  the  earnest 
and  self-sacrificing  English  magistrate  charged  with  the 
oversight  of  the  Indian  towns,  wrote  his  carefully  prepared 
account  of  them  for  the  Society  in  England,  in  1674,  though 
the  manuscript  was  first  put  into  print  £>y  the  Massachu- 
setts Historical  Society  not  until  1792.  ^llis  account  of  the 
progress  of  the  experiment  up  to  the  date  of  his  writing 
represented  the  prospect  as  prevailingly  fair  and  hopeful. 
He  himself  had  labored  jointly  with  Eliot,  with  so  much 
zeal  and  patience,  and  with  such  an  unselfish  and  devout 
spirit,  that  he  had  attained  a  full  knowledge  and  apprecia- 
tion of  all  the  exactions  and  embarrassments  of  the  enter- 
prise. While  himself  cheerful  and  assured,  he  was  not 
over-sanguine,  still  less  enthusiastic.  He  was  always  cau- 
tious, moderate,  and  discreet,  recognizing  alike  the  serious 
difficulties  of  the  undertaking  from  the  rude  material  with 
which  he  had  to  deal,  and  from  the  distrust  and  lack  of 
sympathy  of  many  of  the  English.  He  counted  seven 
tolerably  well  established  settlements  or  villages  of  the 
more  or  less  Christianized  Indians,  and  seven  others  in  a 
crude  state  working  towards  that  condition.  The  former 
were  occupied  substantially  by  natives  who,  with  some  ex- 
ceptions in  each,  had  abandoned  a  vagabond  life,  and  were 


458  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

trying  to  subsist  on  the  produce  of  the  soil,  with  occasional 
hunting  and  fishing,  on  wages  paid  them  by  the  English 
for  labor,  and  on  the  profit  of  some  simple  employments  in 
handicraft.  The  first  seven  of  these  villages  had  their 
forts,  their  outlying  fields,  fenced  or  walled,  their  more 
cleanly  and  decent  cabins,  their  blacksmiths,  their  meeting- 
houses, native  preachers,  teachers,  and  petty  magistrates. 
and  their  administration  of  local  affairs,  with  occasional 
help  from  the  whites.  Fruit-trees  and  growing  crops  gave 
a  show  of  thrift  and  culture  to  the  scenes.  The  Indians 
were  kept  under  a  jealous  and  rigid  Puritan  oversight, 
which  could  not  but  have  been  irritating,  even  if  necessary 
in  restraining  them.  It  might  be  said  that  no  scheme  or 
effort,  in  its  device  or  conduct,  undertaken  by  Europeans 
for  the  Christian  civilization  of  the  natives  of  this  soil,  and 
indeed  that  no  missionary  enterprise  among  pagans  in  any 
part  of  the  earth,  was  ever  more  sincerely  attempted,  or 
pursued  with  more  practical  wisdom  and  with  more  reason- 
able grounds  for  a  rightful  success,  than  this.  Yet  even 
with  this  experiment  in  full  view,  without  the  discomfiture 
brought  upon  it,  a  general  and  sweeping  conclusion  might 
with  something  more  than  mere  plausibility  be  drawn,  that 
the  Indians  cannot  be  civilized  by  the  agency  of  the  white 
man  instigating  and  co-operating  with  them.  Inherent 
and  insurmountable  obstacles  from  the  blood  and  fibre,  the 
instincts  and  temperament,  —  the  nature,  so  to  speak, — 
of  the  red  race  withstand  all  such  efforts.  As  well  essay, 
it  may  be  said,  to  expel  the  game-flavor  from  the  deer  or 
the  sea-fowl.  Eliot  and  Gookin  had  to  realize,  from  the 
first  and  increasingly,  the  distrust,  the  antipathy,  and  even 
the  firm-set  opposition,  of  their  own  countrymen  to  the 
work  they  were  performing.  And  these  feelings  were  by 
no  means  to  be  ascribed  in  all  cases  to  unworthy  or  even 
unchristian  motives.  The  Indians  were  said  to  have  in 
view  "the  loaves  and  fishes,"  to  be  untamable,  and  in  fact 
likely,  as  hypocrites  or  weaklings  or  dependent  and  shift- 


CALAMITOUS   EXPERIENCES.  459 

less  paupers,  to  prove  more  of  a  nuisance  in  their  simulated 
state  of  civilization  than  in  their  wild  condition.  Candor 
also  requires  the  acknowledgment  that  the  considerable 
cost  and  charges  of  the  work  among  the  Massachusetts 
Indians  were  not  borne  by  the  colony  treasury,  nor  relieved 
to  any  extent  by  contributions  of  the  colonists  themselves, 
who  might  have  reasonably  excused  themselves  by  their 
own  necessities.  The  experiment  was  in  the  main  sup- 
ported by  the  charitable  and  pious  sympathy  and  gifts  of 
the  contributors  to  the  funds  of  the  Society  in  England. 

But  a  copy  of  the  manuscript  of  Grookin's  hopeful  narra- 
tive could  not  have  been  long  in  England  before  he  was 
compelled,  under  date,  at  his  residence  in  Cambridge,  of 
December,  1677,  to  employ  his  pen  in  finishing  a  most  sad 
narrative.  This  second  narrative,  after  an  obscured  exist- 
ence in  England,  was  found  there  long  after  in  private 
hands,  and  was  put  into  print  merely  as  an  antiquarian 
document,  by  the  American  Antiquarian  Society,  only  in 
1836.  Even  at  this  late  day,  and  while  the  pangs  which  it 
cost  the  writer,  and  of  which  as  borne  by  others  it  was  the 
j^lthful  record,  have  long  been  stilled  in  peace,  it  cannot  be 
read  without  a  profound  sympathy  of  sorrow.  It  is  entitled, 
"  An  Historical  Account  of  the  Doings  and  Sufferings  of  the 
Christian  Indians  in  New  England,  in  the  years  1675, 1676, 
and  1677,  impartially  drawn,  by  one  well  acquainted  with 
that  Affair,"  for  the  Corporation  in  England.  The  gentle, 
earnest  truthfulness,  the  sweet  forbearance,  the  passionless 
tone,  and  the  full,  minute,  and  well-authenticated  matter 
of  this  record,  draw  to  the  writer  our  warmest  respect 
and  confidence.  The  substance  of  it  is  a  matter-of-fact, 
detailed  rehearsal  of  the  jealousies,  apprehensions,  and 
severe  measures  on  the  part  of  the  people  and  Govern- 
ment of  Massachusetts,  in  their  dealing  with  the  "  Praying 
Indians,"  during  the  horrors  and  massacres  of  that  exter- 
minating war  which  is  accredited,  somewhat  doubtfully,  in 
its  plan  and  conduct  to  the  astute  and  able  Metacomet,  or 


460  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

King  Philip,  sachem  of  the  Narragansetts.  Gookin  and 
Eliot  were  fully  persuaded,  from  their  own  knowledge,  that 
the  Indians  under  instruction  were  then  sufficient  in  num- 
bers, with  constancy  and  sincerity  for  the  emergency,  if 
they  had  been  judiciously  managed,  to  have  been  most 
effective  allies  of  the  whites  in  that  war ;  and  that  their 
settlements  were  in  fact  admirably  adapted  to  be  a  wall  of 
defence.  But  from  the  outbreak  of  that  havoc  of  burning, 
pillage,  and  carnage  arose  horrid  apprehensions  of  treach- 
ery fostered  in  the  Indian  towns.  Rumors  that  Philip's 
runners  and  messengers  were  engaging  in  the  bloody  work 
all  the  natives,  even  of  distant  tribes,  filled  the  air.  Tribes 
heretofore  hostile  to  each  other  and  harmless  towards 
the  English  were  said  to  be  in  the  league.  The  dark- 
est jealousies,  which  could  not  be  reasoned  with,  popular 
panics,  and  bruited  or  whispered  suspicions,  had  full  sway. 
The  word  was,  "  We  have  been  nourishing  vipers."  It  was 
affirmed  that,  either  by  artifice,  or  threats,  or  promise  of 
reward,  Philip  would  sooner  or  later  induce  the  con- 
verted Indians  to  make  common  cause  with  him  as  spies  or 
traitors.  This  jealousy  was  natural,  and  is  not  to  be  won^ 
dered  over.  The  magistrates  seem  to  have  tried  to  with- 
stand it.  Many  of  their  first  measures  in  dealing  with 
it  were  considerate  and  forbearing,  as  they  remonstrated 
with  the  popular  excitement,  and  endeavored  to  restrain 
it,  manifesting  a  true  sympathy  with  the  suspected  and 
odious  parties.  But  it  was  all  in  vain.  Just  enough  cases 
also  did  occur,  which,  when  aggravated  by  rumor  and  gen- 
eralized upon,  seemed  to  warrant  suspicion  and  distrust  of 
all  the  Christianized  Indians.  Some  few  who  had  settle- 
ments in  the  towns,  and  a  larger  number  of  those  who  had 
never  committed  themselves  directly  to  the  experiment  on 
trial  in  their  behalf,  slipped  away  into  the  woods.  In  three 
instances  barns  or  outbuildings  in  exposed  situations  were 
set  on  fire,  as  was  suspected  and  alleged,  by  Indians  who 
had  been  under  the  kindly  care  of  the  whites.  In  no  in- 


461 

stance,  however,  was  such  a  deed  proved  against  any  one 
of  them,  while  there  were  mischievous  and  malignant  strol- 
lers enough  in  those  dismal  days  to  have  done  many  such 
acts,  and  worse  ones.  In  the  mean  time  several  outrages 
and  even  murders  were  committed  against  the  Indians  by 
the  exasperated  whites,  and  the  juries  would  not  convict 
the  offenders  in  the  courts,  though  the  magistrates  faith- 
fully instructed  and  urged  them  to  do  so.  It  would  appear 
that,  as  the  excitement  and  panic  increased,  something  of 
the  effect  followed  which  had  from  the  first  been  appre- 
hended. Many  of  the  Indians  who  were  not  the  most 
constant  or  attached  to  their  new  mode  of  life,  with  others 
who  had  taken  a  disgust  to  its  restraints,  and  still  more 
who  were  discouraged  or  maddened  by  the  jealousy  which 
was  turned  against  them,  did  leave  the  villages  and  enter 
with  some  measure  of  sympathy  and  active  malice  into  the 
schemes  of  the  enemy.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  some 
who  had  been  regarded  as  pledged  to  civilization  and 
Christianity,  and  who  were  under  obligation  to  the  whites, 
did  prove  false  in  various  degrees  of  criminality.  Even 
a  young,  intelligent,  and  well-taught  Indian,  called  James 
Printer,  alias  Wawans,  who  had  been  Eliot's  main  depend- 
ence in  printing  his  Bible  at  Cambridge,  ran  off  to  the 
enemy,  though  he  was  afterwards  received  as  a  returning 
penitent,  he  being  acute  enough  to  offer  excuses  or  to  plead 
for  palliation.  In  the  histories  of  the  then  frontier  towns 
of  Massachusetts  which  have  of  recent  years  been  prepared 
and  published  by  local  antiquarians,  we  find  mention  of  one 
or  more  Natick,  Graf  ton,  or  Marlborough  Indians  as  seen  in 
the  files  or  ambush  parties  of  the  devastating  foe. 
N!  As  day  by  day  brought  fresh  alarms,  with  tidings  all  too 
true,  that  the  infuriated  enemy,  maddened  by  their  own 
unchecked  advances,  had  burned  one  after  another  of  our 
outlying  towns,  and  would  inevitably  come  within  the  fron- 
tiers to  the  older  settlements,  the  suspicions  and  animosi- 
ties against  the  Christianized  Indians  could  no  longer  be 


462  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS.' 

held  in  check.  Some  indeed  were  ready  to  turn  against  them 
with  the  deadliest  weapons.  The  General  and  the  County 
Courts  were  compelled  to  act  in  the  case  by  some  decisive 
measures.  A  committee  of  the  magistrates  advised  that 
the  Indians  should  be  removed  from  their  own  settlements 
to  the  close  neighborhood  of  the  seaboard  English  towns, 
—  to  Cambridge  Plains,  to  Dorchester  Neck,  and  Noddle's 
Island,  and  some  to  Concord  and  Mendon.  But  this  prop- 
osition only  exasperated  the  more  the  inhabitants  of  those 
towns,  as  it  would  but  bring  the  dreaded  scourge  nearer  to 
them.  It  was  evident,  all  along,  that  the  greater  famili- 
arity into  which  the  whites  had  been  drawn  with  the  na- 
tives, in  the  process  of  their  so-called  civilization,  only  made 
such  as  were  not  influenced  by  the  highest  considerations 
of  religion  and  true  commiseration  regard  them  with  more 
repugnance  than  when  they  were  in  their  wild  state.  The 
rooted  race-prejudice  stirred  the  English  blood.  Their  oc- 
casional assumptions  of  equality,  induced  by  their  common 
Christian  profession  and  observances,  made  the  Indians 
offensive.  Timid  and  thrifty  persons  dreaded  the  strol- 
ling or  camping  of  a  few  of  them  in  their  neighborhood, 
as  worse  than  gypsies.  The  Indians  observed  and  felt 
all  these  things,  and  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
they  sometimes  gave  the  whites  reason  to  dread  their 
proximity. 

But  there  was  no  alternative  to  the  removal  of  the  Indi- 
ans from  their  settlements ;  and  that  at  Natick,  the  most 
secure,  and  the  least  likely  it  was  thought  to  furnish  trai- 
tors, was  put  under  treatment  from  the  misfortunes  of 
which  it  never  really  renewed  its  first  prosperity.  Eliot 
and  Gookin  stood  resolutely  and  most  affectionately  for  the 
championship  of  the  objects  of  their  care.  They  had  no 
distrust,  no  wavering  in  their  love.  They  pleaded,  remon- 
strated, and  offered  themselves  to  be  sureties  for  the  fidel- 
ity of  the  wretched  and  cowering  converts.  Gookin  was 
confronted  and  insulted  for  his  conduct  in  the  case,  and 
even  Eliot  was  treated  by  some  with  reproaches- and  dis- 


REMOVAL  OF  THE  "PRAYING  INDIANS."       463 

dain.     The  courts  were  compelled  to  yield  to  the  wishes 
of  the  panic-stricken  whites. 

Those  who  have  read  in  detail  the  history  of  these  mel- 
ancholy years  in  Massachusetts  cannot  but  muse  sadly  as 
they  pass  the  present  site  of  the  United  States  Arsenal  in 
Watertown,  formerly  called  "  The  Pines,"  in  Cambridge, 
over  a  scene  that  was  presented  there  in  the  autumn  of 
1675.  The  magistrates  had  reluctantly  ordered  the  re- 
moval of  the  Natick  Indians  to  Deer  Island,  which  was 
then  largely  covered  with  forest  trees,  and  used  for  the 
grazing  of  sheep.  The  owner,  Samuel  Shrimpton,  allowed 
this  use  of  his  island,  with  a  covenant  that  the  trees  should 
not  be  cut  down  nor  the  sheep  molested.  A  friendly  per- 
son, Captain  Thomas  Prentiss  of  Cambridge,  was  charged 
with  the  removal  of  the  Indians.  With  a  party  of  horse 
and  six  carts,  to  transport  a  few  movables  and  the  sick 
and  lame,  he  brought  about  two  hundred  of  them  away 
from  their  ripened  crops,  their  rude  homes,  and  all  the 
associations  which  had  become  dear  and  sacred  to  them,  to 
camp  temporarily  at  the  Pines.  Good  Mr.  Eliot  and  some 
sympathizing  English  met  them  there,  and  were  deeply 
moved  by  their  submissive  patience.  He  prayed  with,  com- 
forted, and  assured  them.  At  midnight,  the  tide  serving, 
on  October  30,  they  were  shipped  in  three  vessels  for  the 
island.  Their  numbers  were  increased  before  the  end  of 
December  to  about  five  hundred,  by  the  Punkapoag  or 
Stoughton  Indians.  Eliot  then  went  down  to  cheer  and 
encourage  them.  He  writes  of  them :  — 

"  I  observed  in  all  my  visits  to  them  that  they  earned  themselves 
patiently,  humbly,  and  piously,  without  murmuring  or  complaining 
against  the  English  for  their  sufferings  (which  were  not  few),  for 
they  lived  chiefly  upon  clams  and  shellfish,  that  they  digged  out 
of  the  sand  at  low  water.  The  Island  was  bleak  and  cold,  and 
their  wigwams  poor  and  mean,  their  clothes  few  and  thin.  Some 
little  corn  they  had  of  their  own  which  the  Council  ordered  to  be 
fetched  from  their  plantations  and  conveyed  to  them  by  little  and 
little.  Also,  a  boat  and  man  was  appointed  to  look  after  them." 


464  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS.' 

The  continued  distrust  of  the  "Praying  Indians"  was 
steadily  met  by  the  confidence  and  urgency  of  the  few 
friends,  who  made  themselves  personal  enemies  by  so  do- 
ing. By  and  by,  the  English  found  that  all  their  efforts 
against  the  wily  foe,  at  ruinous  sacrifices  of  money,  prop- 
erty, and  life,  were  baffled  by  the  mode  of  the  enemy's  war- 
fare, in  ambushes  and  surprises,  in  dense  forests  and  in 
swamps.  It  seemed  as  if  the  advantage  was  on  their  side, 
and  that  the  white  settlements  would  all  fall  before  the 
torch  and  the  massacre.  In  this  dire  extremity  Eliot  and 
Gookin  proposed  that  some  of  their  disciples,  for  whose 
fidelity,  prowess,  and  skill  in  Indian  warfare  they  would 
pledge  themselves,  should  be  employed  as  guides  and  allies, 
especially  on  errands  for  redeeming  such  captive  whites  as 
had  not  been  tomahawked,  and  to  penetrate  swamps  and 
thickets.  With  extreme  misgiving  and  caution,  and  not 
without  sharpening  new  jealousies,  the  suggestion  was 
heeded,  and  the  resource  proved  to  be  highly  serviceable. 
At  first  one,  then  two,  and  slowly  more,  of  the  poor 
wretches  on  Deer  Island  were  put  to  this  use.  The  allies 
proved  faithful.  They  stripped  and  painted  themselves 
like  the  enemy,  and  tracked  them  to  their  lairs.  At  last  a 
company  of  eighty  of  them  was  put  under  the  command  of 
Captain  Hunting  of  Charlestown,  and  did  eminent  service. 
Gookin  affirms  that  in  the  summer  of  1676  the  Indian  al- 
lies, in  scouting  and  in  battles,  had  killed  at  least  four 
hundred  of  the  enemy,  and  that  their  co-operation  "  turned 
the  balance  to  the  English  side,"  and  "the  enemy  went 
down  the  wind  amain."  It  was  alleged  that  an  Indian 
would  always  yield  to  the  temptation  of  liquor,  and  would 
become  infuriated  by  it.  Gookin  said,  that,  being  used  only 
to  water,  a  very  little  spirit  would  intoxicate  one  of  them. 
He  could  not  bear  the  fourth  part  of  an  Englishman's  dram. 
Gookin  had  "  known  one  drunk  with  an  eighth  of  a  pint  of 
strong  water,  and  others  with  a  little  more  than  a  pint  of 
cider."  Another  statement  of  Gookin's  on  this  point  may 


PARTIAL   RESTORATION.  465 

be  quoted,  though  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  relieve  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  English  in  furnishing  the  Indians  with 
liquor,  inasmuch  as  they  must  have  taught  them  how  to 
make  it :  — 

"  If  it  were  possible,  as  it  is  not,  to  prevent  the  English  selling 
them  strong  drink,  yet  they  have  a  native  liberty  to  plant  orchards 
and  sow  grain,  as  barley  and  the  like,  of  which  they  may  and  do 
make  strong  drink  that  doth  inebriate  them ;  so  that  nothing  can 
overcome  and  conquer  this  exorbitancy  but  the  sovereign  grace 
of  God." 

It  had  still  been  intended  that  the  removed  Indians 
should  remain,  and  work  and  plant  on  the  islands  in  the 
harbor.  But  the  good  service  done  by  many  of  them  helped 
a  relenting  feeling.  The  distressed  condition  of  the  old 
men,  the  women,  and  the  children  drew  pity  towards  them. 
Good  Thomas  Oliver,  their  friend,  offered  to  harbor  them 
at  his  place  on  Charles  River,  Cambridge.  Their  release 
in  May,  1676,  was  a  jubilee  to  the  poor  creatures.  It  was 
estimated  that  about  a  fourth  part  of  all  the  Indians  in 
New  England  —  Massachusetts  numbering  three  thousand 
—  had  been  more  or  less  influenced  by  civilization  and 
Christianity.  It  was  believed  by  some  that  had  it  not  been 
for  these,  and  had  they  on  the  other  hand  been  leagued 
with  Philip,  the  whites  would  have  been  exterminated. 
After  the  war  the  "stated  places"  for  Indian  churches  in 
Massachusetts  were  contracted  to  four.  Occasional  sta- 
tions were  established  for  preaching,  where  the  natives  met 
to  fish,  hunt,  or  gather  nuts.  In  Plymouth  colony  and  in 
the  Vineyard  there  were  ten  in  each,  and  in  Nantucket  five. 
In  1670  Eliot,  with  Cotton  of  Plymouth,  and  Mr.  Mayhew, 
ordained  at  the  Vineyard  Hiacoomes,  the  first  converted 
native  pastor  of  the  Indian  church,  —  a  worthy  and  noted 
man.  He  had  had  a  promising  son  in  Harvard  College.  An 
Indian  church  was  soon  after  gathered  at  Mashpee,  with  an 
English  pastor.  The  "Praying  Indians"  in  Massachusetts, 

Plymouth,  and  the  Vineyard,  in  1674,  were  numbered  at 

30 


466  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIAN'S. 

3,600.  Eliot,  writing  in  1673,  names  six  Indian  churches 
at  Natick,  Grafton,  Mashpee,  Nantucket,  and  two  at  the 
Vineyard.  All  these,  he  says,  have  regular  native  teach- 
ers, except  Natick,  where,  "  in  modesty,  they  stand  off,  be- 
cause so  long  as  I  live,  they  say,  there  is  no  need."  In 
1687  President  Increase  Mather  wrote  to  Professor  Leusden, 
of  Holland :  "  There  are  six  regular  churches  of  baptized 
Indians  in  New  England,  and  eighteen  assemblies  of  cate- 
chumens (or  candidates  for  baptism),  professing  the  name 
of  Christ.  Of  the  Indians  there  are  twenty-four  preachers 
of  the  Word.  There  are  also  four  English  ministers  who 
preach  the  Gospel  in  the  Indian  tongue."  In  1698  Grindal 
Kawson  and  Samuel  Danforth,  as  a  committee  appointed  to 
visit  Natick,  reported:  "  We  find  there  a  small  church,  con- 
sisting of  seven  men  and  three  women.  Their  pastor  (or- 
dained by  that  reverend  and  holy  man  of  God  John  Eliot, 
deceased)  is  Daniel  Tahawampait,  and  is  a  person  of  good 
knowledge.  Here  are  fifty-nine  men,  fifty-one  women,  and 
seventy  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age.  We  find  no 
schoolmaster  here,  and  only  one  child  that  can  read."  Up 
to  the  year  1733  all  the  town  officers  of  Natick  were  Ind- 
ians. They  were  partially  such  till  1762,  after  which  date 
there  were  none.  The  place  was  incorporated  as  an  Eng- 
lish town  in  1762,  having  been  under  its  former  character 
from  1651  to  that  date.  By  the  census  of  1763  there  were 
in  the  town  thirty-seven  Indians.  In  1792  there  remained 
but  a  single  Indian  family,  that  having  five  members. 

October  28,  1846,  there  was  a  local  celebration  of  the 
two  hundredth  anniversary  of  Eliot's  first  visit  to  the  spot. 
Two  very  suggestive  incidents,  deeply  pathetic,  marked  that 
occasion.  There  was  present  at  the  exercises  a  girl  of  six- 
teen years,  who  was  the  only  lineal  descendant  of  the  Ind- 
ians known  to  exist.  A  copy  of  Eliot's  Indian  Bible  — 
purchased  by  subscription  for  the  purpose,  from  the  sale  of 
the  library  of  the  Hon.  John  Pickering  —  was  then  pre- 
sented for  deposit  among  the  town's  records. 


INDIANS   AT   HARVARD    COLLEGE.  467 

Not  the  least  among  the  sad  memories  shrouding  this 
wilderness-work, —  earnest  and  sincere  in  its  purpose,  but 
so  utterly  thwarted  and  blighted  in  its  time  for  fruitage, — 
are  those  of  the  Indian  boys  and  young  men  for  whose 
special  use  the  first  substantial  building  was  erected  on  the 
grounds  of  Harvard  College.  The  flavor  and  restlessness 
of  a  forest  life  were  to  be  extracted  from  their  blood  and 
fibres  by  a  classical  and  scholarly  academic  training; 
though  the  forest  would  have  been  sure  to  reclaim  every 
one  that  consumption  or  the  change  in  diet  and  habit  might 
spare.  Six  youths,  after  a  preliminary  training  in  a  gram- 
mar-school, were  in  the  classes  at  one  time.  Of  two,  who 
were  just  about  to  graduate,  one  —  the  most  promising,  a 
son  of  Hiacoomes,  the  much-esteemed  convert  at  the 
Vineyard  —  was  murdered  on  a  vacation  visit  home.  The 
other,  Caleb  Cheeshahteaumuck,  whose  name  alone  is  on 
the  catalogue,  graduated  in  1665,  a  classmate  of  the  royal 
Governor  Joseph  Dudley.  He  died  within  a  year,  of 
consumption. 

Eliot  set  up  a  fortnightly  lecture  at  Natick  for  the  Ind- 
ians, "  in  logic  and  theology,"  in  their  own  language. 
Six  young  Huron s  were  contemporaneously  taken  by  the 
priests  into  a  seminary  in  Quebec.  At  the  end  of  five  years 
they  had  run  off  into  the  woods,  carrying  their  Latin  with 
them.  The  only  one  who  had  "  commenced  Bachelor  of 
Arts"  followed  after  them. 

No  laments  could  deepen  the  melancholy  in  which  this 
story  finds  its  conclusion.  To  moralize  over  it  would  be  to 
open  an  inexhaustible  theme.  There  were  places  where 
feeble  remnants  of  these  partially-civilized  natives  remained 
a  little  longer  than  at  Natick.  But  the  longer  they  sur- 
vived the  more  forlorn  was  the  spectacle  they  presented. 
Here  and  there  may  be  seen  in  Massachusetts,  in  these  days, 
a  poor  pensioner  or  vagabond,  in  whose  veins  are  mixed 
Indian  and  African  blood.  Still  there  are  trust-funds  for 
their  relief  and  benefit,  which  happily  are  legally  available 


468  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

for  poor  fishermen  on  islands  and  headlands.  The  only 
knowledge  of  the  ancient  race  which  young  persons  in  Mas- 
sachusetts have  by  actual  eyesight  is  when  their  summer 
sojourns  bring  them  to  the  waters  of  the  Penobscot,  the 
great  hostleries  near  the  mountains  and  the  lakes,  and  the 
borders  of  Canada.  Here  are  still  humiliated  and  taciturn 
specimens  of  full-blooded  Indians.  Such  religion  as  they 
have  is  the  legacy  of  the  Jesuit  missions. 

As  we  view  the  devoted  and  zealous  laborers  in  those 
first  Indian  missions,  we  have  to  say  that  the  task  with 
which  the  Jesuit  charged  himself  was  intellectually  far 
lighter  than  that  assumed  by  the  Puritan  ;  that  is  to  say,  it 
was  a  lesser  task  to  turn  an  Indian  into  a  Christian  by  the 
Jesuit  than  by  the  Puritan  method.  It  is  not  easy  for  us 
to  learn  with  any  minuteness  or  fulness  of  detail  exactly 
how  and  what,  in  the  nature  of  intellectual  instruction  in 
religious  and  Christian  truths  and  duties,  —  their  author- 
ity, scope,  and  consistent  influence,  —  the  Jesuit  taught  the 
Indian  disciple.  We  have  but  slight  information  on  this 
point  in  the  earliest  records  of  their  missions.  The  au- 
thority of  the  Church  passed  for  very  much,  and  the  recog- 
nition of  this,  in  an  assent  to  whatever  its  priest  should 
teach  or  require,  seems  to  have  been  the  great  comprehen- 
sive demand  of  the  missionary.  The  savages  who  came 
with  most  docility  or  with  the  least  resistance  on  their  part 
under  the  training  of  the  priest,  seem  to  have  done  so  with- 
out argument  or  much  explanation.  Those  who  resisted 
the  appeal,  and  who  in  any  way  tried  to  justify  their  rejec- 
tion of  the  proffered  blessing,  were  able  and  ready  in  some 
cases  to  give  reasons  —  of  weight  with  themselves  —  for  so 
doing.  We  have  to  judge  that  the  Jesuit  method  was  the 
easier  and  the  more  compliant  one,  because  he  was  much 
more  readily  satisfied  than  the  Puritan  would  have  been  as 
to  the  evidences  of  Christian  conversion  required  of  and 
manifested  by  one  of  the  heathen.  This  easier  work  of  the 
Jesuit  applies  only  to  the  strain  upon  his  own  intellect  and 


SEVERITY  OP  PURITAN   DISCIPLINE.  469 

that  of  his  disciples.  If,  however,  the  test  be  applied  to 
the  relative  exaction  of  toil,  sacrifice,  and  personal  endur- 
ance of  the  two  classes  of  missionaries,  the  Jesuit  was  put 
to  a  far  sterner  trial ;  and  nobly  did  he  meet  it.  Starting 
for  at  least  a  year  of  isolation  in  the  deep  forest,  with  his 
Indian  crew,  he  tucks  up  the  skirts  of  his  cassock  and 
takes  off  his  shoes,  so  as  not  to  carry  sand  or  water  into 
or  to  pierce  the  canoe.  He  bears  his  share  of  packs  over 
the  portages.  He  has  at  hand  flint  and  steel  to  light  fires 
and  pipes.  He  must  be  patient  and  cheerful,  and  never 
tease  or  worry  the  Indians  with  questions.  He  goes  to 
share  with  them  the  life  of  squalor  and  dreariness  already 
described,  in  close  intimacy.  He  became,  as  we  may  say, 
fond  of  his  companions. 

The  first  Puritan  ministers  who  labored  for  the  Indians 
were  men  with  families,  and  generally  with  parishes  of 
their  own.  They  visited  the  Indians  at  intervals,  but 
never  domiciled  with  them.  They  compelled  them  to  cut 
off  their  hair  and  to  wear  clothing.  Eliot  drew  upon  the 
cast-off  wardrobes  and  ragbags  of  his  friends,  as  well  as 
upon  remnants  of  old  sails  and  horse-blankets,  that  he 
might  prepare  his  red  flock  to  enter  Paradise  with  some 
of  the  apparel  which  Adam  put  on  when  he  was  leaving  it. 
This  teasing  interference  with  all  the  personal  habits  of 
the  Indians  is  an  illustration  of  that  strong  antipathy, 
already  remarked  upon,  which  the  Englishman  felt  for  the 
native.  This  antipathy,  and  the  hauteur  accompanying  it, 
alienated  the  Indian.  When  Major  Gibbons  was  commis- 
sioned, in  1645,  to  aid  our  allies  the  Mohicans,  he  was  in- 
structed "  to  make  good  use  of  our  confederates,  having 
due  regard  to  the  honor  of  God,  who  is  both  our  sword  and 
shield,  and  to  the  distance  which  is  to  be  observed  between 
Christians  and  barbarians,  as  well  in  wars  as  in  other  ne- 
gotiations." The  historian  Hutchinson1  remarks  on  this 
advice :  "  It  seems  strange  that  men  who  professed  to  be- 

1  Collection  of  Papers,  p.  151. 


470  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

lieve  that  '  God  hath  made  of  one  blood,'  etc.,  should  so 
early  and  upon  every  occasion  take  care  to  preserve  this 
distinction.  Perhaps  nothing  has  more  effectually  defeated 
the  endeavors  for  Christianizing  the  Indians.  It  seems  to 
have  done  more, —  to  have  sunk  their  spirits,  led  them  to 
intemperance,  and  extirpated  the  whole  race." 

Wilson,  the  pastor  of  the  Boston  Church,  writing  to 
the  Missionary  Society  in  England,  refers  to  the  visit  to 
the  town,  in  1651,  of  "  Humanequim,  a  grave  and  solemn 
man,"  ordained  by  Mayhew  as  pastor  of  an  Indian  church 
in  Martha's  Vineyard.  Wilson  says  he  was  "  a  great  profi- 
cient in  knowledge  and  utterance,  and  love  and  practice  of 
the  things  of  Christ."  "  On  the  Lord's  Day,  in  the  Assem- 
bly," Wilson  said  he  asked  one  of  the  brethren  "  to  receive 
that  good  Indian  "  into  his  pew,  which  he  did.  Why  did 
he  not  share  the  pulpit  ?  It  stands,  however,  to  the  credit 
of  the  Puritans  that  they  raised  up  native  preachers,  which 
the  Jesuits  did  not.  And  yet  candor  requires  the  acknowl- 
edgment that  one  may  easily  read  between  the  lines  of 
many  contemporary  writings,  that  to  the  stiffer  and  sterner 
of  the  Puritans,  both  clerical  and  lay,  such  imitative  ap- 
proaches to  the  ways  and  manners  of  the  whites  as  were 
reached  by  a  few  of  the  educated  natives  only  made  them 
more  repulsive.  Their  "  civility  and  humanity "  seemed 
but  a  parody  of  the  bearing  into  which  ages  of  softening 
and  refining  processes,  with  the  decencies  and  sanctities  of 
home  life,  had  trained  the  colonists.  The  official  and 
clerical  services  of  Indian  preachers,  and  the  ecclesiastical 
proceedings  of  their  flocks,  —  rude  and  even  ludicrous  as 
for  the  most  part  they  must  have  been,  —  must  on  occasion 
have  tried  the  spirits  and  pride  of  grim-faced  observers. 
Cotton  Mather  betrays  the  disgust  working  in  his  own  feel- 
ings in  this  sentence  of  his  Life  of  Eliot :  "  To  think  of 
raising  a  number  of  these  hideous  creatures  unto  the  ele- 
vations of  our  holy  religion,  must  argue  more  than  com- 
mon or  little  sentiment  in  the  undertaker."  Too  often 


4T1 

under  forced  training  the  Indian  lost  whatever  of  sponta- 
neous or  inherent  simplicity  or  dignity  he  might  have 
caught  as  he  roamed  the  woods,  a  child  of  nature.  The 
virility  of  his  manhood  yielded  to  a  humiliated  sense  of 
inferiority.  His  former  attitude  of  spirit  which  stood  for 
self-respect  was  bowed  into  conscious  dread,  though  not 
always  deference,  for  the  white  race. 

Some  of  Eliot's  successors,  such  as  Sergeant,  Edwards, 
Brainerd,  and  others,  attempted  a  simpler  method  in  teach- 
ing the  Indians.  The  first  of  these,  though  a  Calvinist, 
said  he  had  "  learned  not  to  meddle  with  high  themes,  such 
as  predestination  and  the  origin  of  evil,  but  preached  faith, 
repentance,  and  morality."  The  Jesuit  teaching  must  also 
in  its  way  have  had  many  elements  for  confounding  and 
puzzling  the  minds  of  their  disciples.  One  of  them,  a  pris- 
oner in  Boston,  said  that  he  had  been  taught  —  or  at  any 
rate  had  so  understood  the  lesson  —  that  the  Virgin  Mary 
was  a  French  woman,  and  that  Christ  was  born  in  France. 
Certainly  the  extremes  of  difference  in  means  and  methods 
for  reaching  a  result  which  had  any  common  significance 
to  both  parties  —  such  as  the  making  of  Christians  in  be- 
lief and  life  —  could  hardly  present  themselves  in  sharper 
antagonism  than  did  those  of  the  Jesuit  and  the  Puritan. 

The  abundant  quotations  which  have  been  made  in  the 
preceding  pages  from  prime  authorities,  and  the  comments 
upon  them,  present  to  us  in  full  view  the  little  that  has 
been  common  between  the  aims  and  methods  of  the  two 
great  branches  of  the  Christian  church  in  their  efforts  to 
convert  the  natives.  As  to  the  larger  proportion  of  what 
has  been  variant  and  discordant,  and  even  antagonistic,  in 
those  aims  and  methods,  charity  and  wise  judgment  will 
best  guide  the  reader  in  his  own  decision.  The  statement 
has  been  made  with  this  fulness  as  regards  the  beginnings  of 
this  missionary  work,  because,  as  our  space  will  not  allow 
us  to  trace  its  progress  and  present  aspects  down  to  our 
own  time,  we  may  feel  relieved  of  the  task  by  the  simple 


472  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

suggestion  that  the  beginnings  of  the  work  set  the  example 
which  has  substantially  been  followed  since  by  both  parties 
of  Christians.  That  missionary  work  among  the  Indians 
has  never  to  this  day  been  given  over.  In  spite  of  all  the 
perplexities  and  embarrassments  which  have  attended  it,  and 
notwithstanding  all  the  discouragements,  thwartings,  and 
failures  which  have  clouded  it,  the  inspiration  of  faith 
and  duty  has  always  won  to  it  earnest  and  zealous  labor- 
ers, and  has  secured  to  them  the  full  sympathy  and  the  gen- 
erous patronage  so  essential  to  its  support.  Driven  from 
one  field  of  labor  by  war  or  ruin,  the  missionaries  have 
sought  another ;  disappointed  in  the  trial  of  one  scheme, 
they  have  soon  devised  a  substitute.  As  each  new  organiza- 
tion or  society,  starting  with  hopefulness  in  friends  and  funds, 
has  languished  and  been  left  to  die,  a  fresh  enterprise  finds 
a  ready  rallying  at  its  call.  And  all  this  is  true,  notwith- 
standing the  frequent  rebuke  that  heathen  across  the  seas 
engage  the  sympathy  which  is  needed  for  those  at  home. 

It  is  further  to  be  observed  that  Roman  Catholics  and 
Protestants,  in  their  continued  and  unintermitted  mission- 
ary efforts,  still  pursue  substantially  the  same  divergent 
aims  and  methods  in  their  service  among  the  Indians 
which  we  have  found  were  adopted  by  them  at  the  first. 
Perhaps,  however,  this  statement  should  be  subjected  to 
the  following  qualifications :  namely,  that  the  Jesuit  mis- 
sionaries have  of  late  been  more  regardful  of  the  obligation 
and  necessity  of  direct  efforts  for  civilizing  the  Indians, 
while  Protestant  missionaries  have  to  a  certain  extent  sub- 
ordinated direct  religious,  or  at  least  dogmatical,  teaching 
to  preparatory  training  in  secular  education,  manual  indus- 
try, and  morals.  The  Jesuit  has  adapted  his  efforts  to  the 
changes  in  the  circumstances  of  the  lives  and  conditions 
of  some  Indian  tribes  incident  upon  their  removals,  the 
crowding  upon  them  of  the  whites,  and  their  increasing 
dependence  upon  the  helps  of  civilization.  Let  us  take  the 
testimony  of  two  Jesuit  missionaries  in  quite  recent  years. 


INDIANS  ON  THE   COLUMBIA.  473 

Here  is  Father  De  Smet's  description  "  of  the  deplorable 
condition  of  the  poor  petty  tribes,  in  1846,  scattered  along 
the  banks  of  the  Columbia,  of  which  the  numbers  visibly 
diminish  from  year  to  year  :  "  — 

"  Imagine  their  dwellings,  a  few  poor  huts,  constructed  of  rush, 
bark,  bushes,  or  of  pine  branches,  sometimes  covered  with  skins  or 
rags.  Around  these  miserable  habitations  lie  scattered  in  profusion 
the  bones  of  animals  and  the  offal  of  fishes  of  every  tribe,  amidst 
accumulated  filth  of  every  description.  In  the  interior  you  find 
roots  piled  up  in  a  corner,  skins  hanging  from  cross-poles,  and  fish 
boiling  over  the  fire,  —  a  few  dying  embers,  an  axe  to  cut  wood  be- 
ing seldom  found  among  them.  The  whole  stock  of  kitchen  uten- 
sils, drinking-vessels,  dishes,  etc.,  are  comprised  in  something  like 
a  fish-kettle,  made  of  osier  and  besmeared  with  gum.  To  boil  this 
kettle  stones  are  heated  red-hot  and  thrown  into  it.  But  the  mess 
cooked  in  this  way,  can  you  guess  what  it  is  1  No,  not  in  twenty 
trials  ;  it  is  impossible  to  divine  what  the  ingredients  are  that  com- 
pose this  outlandish  soup  ! 

"But  to  pass  from  the  material  to  the  personal:  what  strange 
figures  !  Faces  thickly  covered  with  grease  and  dirt ;  heads  that 
have  never  felt  a  comb  ;  hands  —  but  such  hands  !  a  veritable  pair 
of  Jack-at-all-trades,  fulfilling  in  rapid  succession  the  varied  func- 
tions of  the  comb,  the  pocket-handkerchief,  the  knife,  fork,  and 
spoon.  While  eating,  the  process  is  loudly  indicated  by  the  crack- 
ling and  discordant  sounds  that  issue  from  the  nose,  mouth,  throat, 
etc.,  —  a  sight  the  bare  recollection  of  which  is  enough  to  sicken 
any  person.  Thus  you  can  form  some  idea  of  their  personal  miser- 
ies, —  miseries,  alas !  that  faintly  image  another  species  infinitely 
more  saddening ;  for  what  shall  I  say  in  attempting  to  describe 
their  moral  condition'?"1 

Upon  this  unpromising  field  of  labor,  and  others  like  it 
in  a  wide  neighborhood,  Father  De  Smet  with  several  of 
his  brethren  planted  themselves.  Never  was  there  a  more 
serene,  hopeful,  and  joyous  spirit  than  is  manifested  on  the 
pages  of  his  book.  His  eye  and  skill,  in  observing  and 

1  Oregon  Missions  and  Travels  over  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  1845-46, 
pp.  236-37.  By  Father  P.  J.  De  Smet,  S.  J.  New  York,  1847. 


474  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE  INDIANS. 

describing  the  scenery  and  life  of  the  region,  mark  him  as 
a  man  of  a  refined  spirit,  of  delicate  tastes,  of  broad  cul- 
ture, and  of  an  artistic  genius.  But  his  enthusiasm  over 
the  promise  and  success  of  his  work,  his  doting  fondness 
for  his  "  good  Indians,"  his  relations  of  the  almost  womanly 
affection  which  they  manifest  to  him,  and  his  exultant  rec- 
ord of  conversions,  of  baptisms  of  infants  and  adults,  of 
first  communions,  and  of  the  gushing  joy  on  the  church 
festivals  with  their  rude  resources,  would  hardly  have  been 
edifying  reading  for  an  old  Puritan. 

The  aim  and  method  of  the  Eoman  Catholic  system  of 
dealing  with  the  natives  are  well  set  forth,  though  scarcely 
with  any  breadth  of  charity  for  other  workers,  by  the  Abbe 
Em.  Domenech,  a  missionary  among  them  : l  — 

"  In  general  the  Americans,  above  all,  only  consider  civilization, 
not  as  a  blessing  which  might  polish  savages,  preserve  their  natural 
good  qualities,  extend  the  elements  of  well-being  they  already  pos- 
sess, reform  their  faults  and  vices,  and  modify  their  inclinations 
and  character,  but  rather  as  a  means  of  clearing  this  rich  and  fertile 
country  of  an  independent,  jealous,  cruel,  or  at  least  useless,  em- 
barrassing, and  degraded  population.  Religion,  whose  solicitude 
extends  over  all  mankind,  has  shown  that  what  human  philan- 
thropy would  not  or  could  not  achieve,  from  impotency,  was  to  her 
quite  possible;  and  that  the  civilization  of  the  Indians  was  a  prob- 
lem easy  to  expound,  and  a  work  equally  useful  to  humanity  and 
the  general  interests  of  nations.  Missionaries  —  with  no  aid  but 
their  faith,  their  zeal,  and  their  love  of  all  the  souls  redeemed  by  the 
divine  blood  shed  on  the  Mount  of  Calvary  —  have  gone  forward, 
crucifix  in  hand,  among  the  great  deserts  of  the  New  World ;  and 
far  from  attempting  to  annihilate  savages  and  destroy  their  natural 
character,  have  raised  them  to  the  rank  of  Christians  and  men 
regenerated  by  an  eminently  civilizing  religion.  They  have  pre- 
served the  customs  and  dress  rendered  necessary  by  climate  and 
habit  .to  the  rude  industry  of  the  desert.  They  have  added  ele- 
ments of  European  industry,  useful  or  indispensable  in  regions 
where  wants  are  so  few,  and  have  softened  the  social  feelings  to 

«*  See  his  "Seven  Years'  Residence  in  the  Great  Deserts  of  North  Amer- 
ica."    1860.     Vol.  ii.  p.  441. 


MORAVIAN  MISSIONS.  475 

that  degree  that  wars  have  become  rare  among  tribes  over  whose 
territories  the  missionaries'  influence  has  not  been  paralyzed  by 
the  advice  and  instigation  of  white  people ;  so  that  civilization 
produced  by  Christianity  for  these  unfortunate  people  is  not  a 
destructive  and  demoralizing  work,  but  one  of  happiness  and 
improvement." 

As  was  remarked   on  a  previous   page,  the  Moravians 

—  taking  up  their  residences  with  Indian  communities,  and 
devoting  themselves  in  schools,  workshops,  and  fields  to 
the  joint  objects  of  civilizing  and  Christianizing  the  natives 

—  found   in  their  early   zeal  and  efforts  more  rewarding- 
results  than  have  been  attained  by  any  other  Protestant 
fellowship.     Men  that  are  justly  entitled  to  the  epithets 
"  saintly  "  and  "  apostolic,"  coming  from  a  pietistic  com- 
munion in  Germany,  gathered  considerable  bodies  of  the 
natives  in  communities,  —  first  in  New  York  and  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  afterwards  in  Ohio.     These  gave  such  promise 
of  full  success  as  gratified,  if  they  did  not  reward,  the  devo- 
tion and  hopefulness  of  the  missionaries.     But  the  same 
tragic  fate,  from  similar  causes  and  agencies,  befell  most 
of  these  communities  at  a  critical  stage  of  their  training, 
as  was  visited  upon  Eliot's  Indian  towns  in  Massachusetts. 
Except  that  in  the  case  of  the  Moravian  settlements  not 
only  Indians  hostile  to  their  objects,  but  whites  also,  were 
the  agents  of  their  destruction  in  the  closing  years  of  the 
French  war,  and   in   the   distracting   strifes  of   our   own 
Revolution. 

Only  in  the  most  summary  terms  can  we  recognize  here 
the  continuance,  under  various  modifications  and  adapta- 
tions, of  missionary  efforts  devised  by  Protestants  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Indians.  They  have  never  been  neglected 
or  intermitted  up  to  our  time.  Humane  and  generous  sen- 
timents instigating  a  work  of  obligation,  with  funds  supplied 
to  sustain  the  work,  have  devised  a  succession  of  schemes 
of  local  or  general  operation  in  the  service  of  the  Indians. 
Yery  many  of  such  among  them  as  showed  promise  of 


476  MISSIONARY   EFFORTS   AMONG   THE   INDIANS. 

being  efficient  helpers  of  their  own  race  have  been  edu- 
cated by  the  whites  in  academies  and  colleges,  on  farms 
.  and  in  manufactories,  that  they  might  impart  to  others,  in 
their  own  way,  some  share  of  their  own  attainments  and 
experience.  Zealous  missionaries,  with  or  without  families 
of  their  own,  and  supported  by  their  various  religious  de- 
nominations, have  resided  and  labored  among  several  of 
the  tribes.  These  have  sometimes  proved  to  have  more  zeal 
than  practical  good  sense  or  aptitude  for  the  work.  As 
might  naturally  have  been  expected,  in  conformity  with 
what  was  said  on  an  earlier  page  of  this  volume,  such  mis- 
sionaries report  to  us  different  views  of  the  Indians  than 
do  soldiers  or  frontiersmen  whose  relations  with  the  sav- 
ages are  so  unlike.  But  discouragement  and  failure  have 
not  infrequently  disheartened  even  these  missionaries.  We 
.may  say  of  the  Indians,  as  indeed  we  may  also  of  the 
whites,  that  religious  dogmas  avail  but  little  for  the  sterner 
work  of  life. 

The  most  promising  measures  and  methods  for  the  relief 
and  the  elevation  of  the  natives  are  those  which  are  just 
now  on  vigorous  trial  as  a  part  of  the  "  Peace  Policy "  of 
our  Government.  This  matter  will  engage  our  attention  in 
the  concluding  chapter  of  this  volume.  Here  it  needs  only 
to  be  said  that  all  the  most  hopeful  interest  of  our  present 
efforts  centres  upon  the  principle,  adopted  as  an  axiom, 
that  the  Indian  must  be  rid  of  all  his  savage  qualities  and 
habits  by  being,  even  compulsorily,  subjected  to  civilizing 
processes,  before  he  can  receive  any  real  benefit  from  our 
religion  or  humanity.  This  alone  can  protect  him  from 
jthe  hostilities  of  his  own  race,  and  from  the  aggressions 
of  the  whites.  In  connection  with  the  agencies  supported 
by  the  Government  among  the  Indians,  the  various  religious 
denominations  are  invited  at  their  own  charges  to  send 
missionaries  to  reside  among  them.  So  far  as  these  devote 
themselves  to  secular  education  also,  and  to  teaching  and 
aiding  industrial  pursuits,  the  Government  furnishes  them 
aid  in  funds  and  materials. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

RELATIONS   OF  GREAT   BRITAIN  WITH   THE   INDIANS. 

THE  subject  of  this  chapter  involves  matters  so  contro- 
verted in  some  of  their  bearings  as  to  require  most  candid 
treatment  in  strict  conformity  to  historic  truths.  It  has 
often  been  affirmed,  and  it  has  generally  been  allowed  to 
pass  unchallenged  as  if  it  were  a  well-established  fact,  that 
the  British,  as  represented  by  their  Government,  have 
always  been  more  just  and  wise  in  their  dealings  with 
the  savages,  and  in  the  treatment  of  them,  than  were  the 
English  colonists  here,  and  than  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment has  ever  been  down  to  the  present  year.  We  are 
reminded  that  Great  Britain  lias  always  had  and  still 
retains  immense  Indian  territories  here,  over  which  she 
exercises  administrative  control ;  and  that  this  has  always 
been  peaceful.  As  in  sharp  contrast  with  our  own  hostile 
relations  with  our  Western  tribes  the  fact  is  brought  to  our 
notice,  that,  within  the  three  years  last  past,  our  latest  In- 
dian foe  with  his  band  sought  and  found  refuge  in  British 
America.  Indeed,  it  has  been  claimed  that  the  British 
have  been  substantially  discreet  and  generous  guardians 
and  benefactors  of  the  Indians,  protecting  them  from  out- 
rage and  oppression,  distributing  among  them  bounties,- 
and  prudently  leaving  them  to  follow  their  own  mode  of 
life.  Put  in  this  positive  and  unqualified  form,  it  would 
seem  as  if  some  huge  blunder  or  some  grievous  injustice 
on  the  part  of  our  Government  was  the  sole  cause  of  dis- 
advantage in  which  we  are  thus  placed  when  compared 
with  our  mother  country. 


478  GREAT   BRITAIN    AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Referring  to  the  unsatisfactory  state  of  the  Indian  ques- 
tion in  British  Columbia,  in  an  address  which  he  delivered 
there  in  1876,  the  Earl  of  Dufferin,  then  Governor-General 
of  Canada  said  :  — 

"Most  unfortunately,  as  I  think,  there  has  been  an  initial  error, 
ever  since  Sir  James  Douglass  quitted  office,  in  the  Government 
of  British  Columbia  neglecting  to  recognize  what  is  known  as  the 
Indian  title.  In  Canada  this  has  always  been  done ;  no  Govern- 
ment, whether  provincial  or  central,  has  failed  to  acknowledge  that 
the  original  title  to  the  land  existed  in  the  Indian  tribes  and  the 
communities  that  hunted  or  wandered  over  them.  Before  we  touch 
an  acre  we  make  a  treaty  with  the  chiefs  representing  the  bands  we 
are  dealing  with,  and  having  agreed  upon  and  paid  the  stipulated 
price,  oftentimes  arrived  at  after  a  great  deal  of  haggling  and  diffi- 
culty, we  enter  into  possession ;  but  not  until  then  do  we  consider 
that  we  are  entitled  to  deal  with  a  single  acre."  1 

I  have  quoted  these  remarks  from  a  most  honored  and 
well-informed  official  of  the  British  crown,  simply  as  an 
emphatic  statement  of  the  prevailing  view  already  referred 
to.  I  have  no  intention  of  making  a  special  challenge  of 
the  correctness  of  his  Lordship's  assertion.  Only  as  it  con- 
forms in  letter  and  spirit  with  the  terms  of  very  many 
similar  assertions  from  a  large  number  of  persons  whose 
words  have  not  the  weight  which  attaches  to  his,  do  I  use 
it  as  a  sort  of  text  to  be  commented  upon  with  frankness, 
as  it  stands  in  the  light  of  facts  in  the  past  and  in  the 
present. 

Great  Britain,  as  a  government,  first  gained  dominion 
here  by  invasion  and  conquest,  after  her  colonists  had  in- 
dependently of  her  patronage  secured  a  footing  on  the  soil. 
She  acceded  also  by  conquest  to  the  territory  which  had 
been  held  by  France,  precisely  as  our  Government  afterwards 
did  to  what  had  been  held  by  our  mother  country.  At  the 
time  of  each  transfer  from  the  French  to  the  English,  and 
from  the  English  to  the  United  States,  the  natives  who  had 

1  Speeches  and  Addresses  by  the  Earl  of  Dufferin,  p.  209.    London,  1882. 


BRITISH    AMERICA.  479 

been  in  occupancy  were,  so  to  speak,  "  thrown  in."  Not  a 
motion,  not  a  thought,  apparently,  was  entertained  about 
any  bargain  or  settlement  in  either  case  with  the  natives. 
Nor  has  England  ever  added  to  her  territory  thus  first 
acquired,  as  the  United  States  has  done,  by  purchases  from 
other  European  nationalities.  What  consideration  did  the 
natives  receive  when  Charles  II.,  by  a  stroke  of  the  pen, 
made  over  to  his  cousin  the  vast  expanses  known  as  Ru- 
pert's Land,  afterwards  the  Hudson  Bay  Company's  terri- 
tory ?  At  what  date,  then,  did  the  affirmation  of  purchase 
in  the  Earl  of  Dufferin's  statement  begin  to  have  a  war- 
rant ?  It  would  seem  to  be  applicable  only  to  compara- 
tively recent  transactions  under  a  great  change  from  the 
original  circumstances.  There  were  vast  spaces  of  lonely, 
desolate,  and  uninhabited  territory  stretching  all  round  the 
settlements  of  the  French  which  were  ceded  to  England. 
For  nearly  a  full  century  British  residents  in  Canada  and 
the  Northwest  had  no  occasion  to  raise  the  question  of  ex- 
tinguishing Indian  titles.  While  our  own  people,  beginning 
before  the  war  of  the  Revolution,  were  steadily  pushing 
forward  their  Western  frontiers,  often  displacing  for  the 
second  time  remnants  or  combinations  of  remnants  of 
tribes  which  had  been  displaced  before,  the  matter  of 
purchasing  or  extinguishing  Indian  titles,  with  compensa- 
tions and  annuities,  was  continually  presenting  itself.  The 
occasions,  too,  were  often  aggravated  by  contentions  as  to 
whether  the  Indians  in  possession  for  the  time  had  ac- 
quired any  real  ownership  of  certain  regions  in  dispute. 
The  vigorous  and  restless  activity  and  enterprise  of  our 
own  people  made  this  a  chronic  and  embittered  trouble. 
The  British  on  their  side  of  the  line,  in  the  long  lethargy 
and  apathy  as  to  any  extension  of  their  colonization,  were 
spared  all  this  strife.  Lumber  and  furs  could  be  gotten  for 
their  traffic  without  raising  contentions  with  the  natives. 
It  was  only  when,  in  the  planting  of  the  Earl  of  Selkirk's 
colony  in  1811,  and  more  recently  in  extending  settlements 


480  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

in  Canada  beyond  the  original  centre,  the  whites  began 
really  to  press  upon  communities  of  natives,  that  bargain 
and  contracts  for  territory  began  to  be  matters  of  interest. 
It  may  be  that  the  Dominion  is  to  have  in  the  future  some 
of  the  troubles  which  we  have  encountered. 

The  explanations,  qualifications,  and  abatements  to  which 
this  alleged  claim  on  behalf  of  the  British  Government  is 
to  be  rightfully  subjected,  reduce  it  in  such  a  degree  as  to 
leave  but  little  if  anything  on  the  credit  side.  Before  our 
Revolutionary  War  the  dealings  of  that  Government,  as 
such,  with  the  Indians  are  hardly  distinguishable  from 
those  of  our  own  colonial  authorities.  Since  the  estab- 
lishment of  our  Government  the  matter  is  more  compli- 
cated. While  we  were  still  colonies  Britain  sought,  as  we 
did,  alliances  with  Indians  against  Indians  ;  our  wars  with 
the  savages  were  in  her  interest  as  well  as  our  own,  and 
the  declaration  of  war  against  them  came  more  than  once 
from  the  other  side  of  the  water.  When  we  were  strug- 
gling for  our  independence,  agents  of  the  British  came  and 
resided  and  intrigued  here  to  set  the  savages  against  us, 
and  succeeded  in  so  doing.  After  we  had  achieved  our 
independence,  Britain,  by  retaining  the  western  posts  which 
she  had  covenanted  to  surrender,  kept  us  more  than  ten 
years  at  warfare  with  her  Indian  allies.  More  than  this, 
Britain  secured  the  alliance  of  Indian  tribes  for  working 
immense  havoc  and  horrors  to  her  colonists,  on  the  solemn 
pledge  on  her  part  to  remunerate  the  savages.  She  did  not 
do  so,  but  left  them,  impoverished  and  infuriated,  on  our 
hands  at  the  end  of  the  war.  Indeed,  it  may  be  safely 
affirmed  that  some  of  the  worst  aggravations  and  strifes 
with  the  Indians  on  our  borders  till  the  close  of  the  war  of 
1812  were  from  the  entail  or  the  renewal  of  hostile  rela- 
tions for  which  the  British  were  largely  if  not  malignantly 
responsible. 

We  strike  at  the  very  root  of  this  assumption  in  behalf 
of  the  wise  and  kindly  British  policy  towards  the  American 


BRITISH   AMERICA.  481 

Indians,  when  we  recognize  the  fact  that  that  Government, 
as  a  government,  has  never  had  any  such  relations  with  the 
savages  as  did  our  colonists,  and  as  the  United  States  now 
have.  That  Government,  as  such,  never  undertook  and 
managed  the  work  of  colonization  on  this  continent  by 
public  initiation,  patronage,  fostering  care,  and  military 
support,  as  it  has  done  in  India  and  Australia.  It  put  its 
seal  to  charters  and  to  proprietary  rights,  but  it  left  adven- 
turers to  their  own  charges  ;  and  in  fact  it  awoke  to  the 
realization  that  it  had  American  colonies  only  when  it  be- 
came aware  that  they  had  prospered  so  as  to  be  available 
for  taxation,  and  were  too  strong  and  independent  to  yield 
to  the  demand.  Not  in  a  single  instance  has  the  British 
Government  sent  over  at  its  own  cost  a  body  of  colonists  to 
this  soil.  The  Government,  therefore,  as  such,  has  never 
had  to  meet  and  deal  with  the  Indians  on  the  same  footing 
as  did  the  actual  colonists.  Those  actual  colonists  were 
English  people  exiled  from  their  own  homes.  As  they 
came  for  a  permanent  stay,  —  not  as  transient,  wandering 
traders,  but  as  agriculturists  and  laborers  on  the  soil, — they 
were  brought  into  intimate  relations  with  the  Indians ;  they 
had  to  struggle  for  a  foothold,  to  secure  local  property,  to 
provide  steadily  for  an  extension  of  their  territory  as  their 
numbers  increased,  to  conciliate  or  subdue  bands  of  the 
aborigines,  and  to  lay  and  defend  the  foundations  of  a  new 
empire  here.  Then,  in  very  early  stages  of  their  hard  en- 
terprise these  English  colonists,  without  any  aid  from  their 
Government  at  home,  had  to  meet  their  first  collisions  with 
Dutcli  and  French  rivals  struggling  for  dominion  in  the 
New  World.  When  these  antagonistic  complications  had 
reached  a  stage  at  which  Britain,  having  in  view  —  which 
ever  it  might  have  been  —  whether  her  own  jealous  pride 
of  empire  or  the  defence  of  her  imperilled  and  exhausted 
colonies,  sent  her  armies  and  fleets  with  generals  and  ad- 
mirals to  crush  the  French,  she  too  was  forced  to  put  her- 
self into  the  same  relations  with  the  savages  as  her  colo- 

31 


482  GREAT  BRITAIN   AND   THE  INDIANS. 

nists  had  maintained,  —  making  alliance  with  some  of 
them,  and  visiting  the  scourge  of  war  on  others.  We  shall 
have  occasion  to  note  how  she  treated  the  Indians.  Again, 
when  Britain  sought  to  crush  the  spirit  of  independence 
among  her  colonists,  and  in  the  second  war  to  tyrannize 
over  the  young  republic,  she  again  put  herself  into  rela- 
tions with  the  savages, —  whether  more  just  than  ours  we 
shall  see. 

The  simple  truth  is,  we  have  been  resident  and  extend- 
ing colonists  from  the  beginning,  mostly  from  British  stock. 
Britain,  in  her  presence  and  power  here,  has  been  only  an 
intermittent  visitor,  appearing  on  the  scene  in  arms.  As 
is  soon  to  be  stated,  the  chief  relations  of  Britain  witli  our 
savages  have  been  for  ends  quite  other  than  colonization, — 
ends  inconsistent  with  colonization;  and  so  her  position  to- 
wards the  savages  has  been  quite  unlike  that  of  the  early 
colonists  and  their  representatives  here  in  our  country. 
The  British  Empire  in  North  America  is  much  larger  in 
area  to-day  than  that  of  our  own  Government.  We  have 
an  area  of  3,026,094  square  miles.  British  America  has  an 
area  of  3,620,500 ;  that  is,  Great  Britain's  domain  exceeds 
our  own  here  by  more  than  half  a  million  of  square  miles. 
Nineteen  twentieths  of  her  domain  is  the  same  old  un- 
settled wilderness  that  it  ever  was;  but  our  own  people 
seem  already  crowded  for  room.  The  Northwest  Terri- 
tory of  Great  Britain  is  nearly  as  extensive  as  our  whole 
domain.  Formerly  belonging  to  the  Hudson  Bay  Company, 
whose  charter  expired  in  1863,  it  passed  to  the  Crown 
nearly  three  millions  of  square  miles  of  territory,  with  a 
population  almost  wholly  of  Indians,  of  which  there  are 
85,000.  Had  the  work  of  colonization  here  by  Great  Brit- 
ain been  as  brisk  and  vigorous  as  that  of  her  own  Ameri- 
can offspring,  we  should  have  seen  lively  times  on  the 
north  and  northwest  of  this  continent.  As  it  is,  from  the 
acknowledgment  of  our  independence  to  this  day,  when- 
ever we  have  had  border  troubles  with  the  savages,  they 


THE  HUDSON  BAY  COMPANY.  483 

have  invariably  found  aid  and  comfort,  arms  and  supplies, 
from  our  brethren  on  the  other  side  of  that  border.  Had 
there  been  for  a  hundred  years  a  rivalry  between  us  for 
actual  colonization  of  those  vast  wildernesses,  we  should 
certainly  have  found  a  Sitting  Bull  as  well  as  John  Bull 
formidable  allies  against  us. 

The  Hudson  Bay  Company  was  for  a  long  time  the  rep- 
resentative of  the  enterprise  —  wholly  commercial  and  mo- 
nopolizing —  of  Great  Britain  on  this  continent.  A  sketch 
of  its  plan  and  operations  will  show  how  different  were  the 
relations  into  which  those  concerned  in  it  were  thrown 
with  the  Indians,  from  those  of  our  own  people  and  Gov- 
ernment. 

The  Hudson  Bay  Company  had  its  origin  in  a  charter 
given  by  Charles  II.  to  Prince  Rupert,  under  date  of  May 
2,  1670,  on  the  return  of  a  party  of  adventurers  in  the  bay 
from  an  enterprise  under  Captain  Gillam,  in  the  "  Nonsuch" 
ketch.  The  charter  conferred  upon  the  Company  the  whole 
region  whose  waters  empty  into  the  Bay,  with  the  right 
"  to  use  and  enjoy  the  whole,  entire,  and  only  trade  and 
traffic,  and  the  whole,  entire,  and  only  liberty,  use, 
and  privilege  of  trading  to  and  from  the  territory,  limits, 
and  places  aforesaid,  and  to  and  with  all  the  natives  and 
people  inhabiting,  or  who  shall  inhabit,  within  the  terri- 
tories, limits,  and  places  aforesaid,"  etc. 

Captain  Butler,  in  1870,  when  he  travelled  in  the  region, 
well  described  it  in  the  title  of  his  book,  as  "  The  Great 
Lone  Land."  There  is  a  grim  significance  in  the  motto  of 
the  chartered  company,  —  "  Pro  pelle  cutem." 

The  enormous  and  vaguely  bounded  territory  thus  be- 
stowed was  called  Rupert's  Land.  The  Prince  was  its  first 
governor ;  his  associates,  as  a  committee,  were  the  Duke  of 
Albemarle,  Lord  Craven,  Lord  Arlington,  and  other  nobles. 
More  than  forty  years  before  the  date  of  this  charter,  Louis 
XIII.  had  made  a  similar  grant  to  "  La  Compagnie  de  la 
Nouvelle  France."  Rupert's  rights  were  made  rigidly 


484  GEEAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

exclusive,  and  the  Company  became  a  gigantic  monopoly. 
No  ends  or  purposes  of  actual  colonization  were  intended  or 
provided  for  in  it;  in  fact,  the  interests  of  the  Company 
discouraged  and  withstood  colonization.  No  attempt  in 
a  design  to  civilize  or  benefit  the  natives  was  proposed  by 
it,  nor  was  any  effort  whatever  made  in  that  direction. 
The  Company  existed  and  was  managed  simply  in  the  in- 
terest of  trade,  and  that  proved  enormously  profitable. 
The  dividends  made  from  its  original  stock,  —  after  that,  in 
modern  phrase,  had  been  well  "watered," — for  110  succes- 
sive years,  from  1690  to  1800,  averaged  between  sixty  and 
seventy  per  cent.  Beginning  its  enterprise  with  a  single 
factory  or  post  near  the  shore  of  the  Bay,  it  extended  the 
field  of  its  operations  far  into  the  Northwest,  and  with  a 
wide  embrace  of  regions  producing  the  fur-bearing  animals. 
Its  chain  of  posts  or  forts  was  connected  by  streams,  lakes, 
and  portages,  by  which  the  natives  brought  their  peltries  to 
the  Company's  clerks  and  agents  to  be  bartered  for  Euro- 
pean commodities.  ,  It  was  but  rarely  that  these  posts 
were  fortified,  as  mutual  advantage  from  traffic  secured 
peaceful  relations.  There  is  something  very  significant 
of  English  policy  in  the  names  given  to  these  chief  fac- 
tories in  Rupert's  Land;  such  as  York,  Albany,  Church- 
ill, Cumberland,  Nelson,  Carlton,  etc.  As  if  to  cheer 
the  agents  of  the  Company, — who,  as  winterers  in  the  sta- 
tions far  inland  in  the  lonely  and  dreary  depths  of  the 
wilderness,  needed  the  help  of  their  imaginations  for  a 
solace, — these  remote  posts  bore  such  names  as  Resolution, 
Providence,  Good  Hope,  Enterprise,  Reliance,  Confidence, 
Hudson's  Hope,  etc.  The  posts  extended  from  Oregon- to 
Ungava,  and  from  Mingan  to  the  Mackenzie.  The  region 
of  country  claimed  under  the  charter  of  the  Company  took 
in  between  two  and  three  millions  of  square  miles,  —  nearly 
fifty  times  the  surface  of  England. 

One  might  gather  a  whole  library  of  volumes  that  have 
been  written  about  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  chiefly  by 


THE  HUDSON  BAY  COMPANY.  485 

those  in  its  employ,  —  its  agents,  servants,  resident  clerks, 
and  winterers.  These  books  cover  the  whole  period  of  its 
existence,  all  its  operations,  and  its  controversies.  Most 
commonly  the  employe's  of  the  Company  were  young  men 
from  Scotland  and  the  Orkneys.  They  were  sent  out  on 
covenants  of  apprenticeship  or  service  for  terms  of  years, 
on  salaries,  wages,  and  prospective  rewards  by  promotion. 
As  a  rule  they  proved  intelligent,  capable,  and  honest; 
soon  conforming  themselves  to  the  conditions  around  them, 
and  occasionally  reaping  rich  advantages  in  a  fair  way. 
Some  of  them  developed  a  genius  that  could  turn  to  account 
their  hazardous  and  arduous  kind  of  life,  —  which,  however, 
at  intervals  became  dismal  and  dreary.  The  books  from 
their  pens  would  be  most  interesting  and  healthfully  excit- 
ing reading  to  our  young  persons  who  love  to  read  of  wild 
and  adventurous  life,  especially  when  assured  that  the 
narrative  is  truthful. 

The  Company  had  in  its  service  at  one  time  about  three 
thousand  persons ;  and  the  hunters  and  trappers  who  sup- 
plied it  roamed  over  a  region  of  five  million  square  miles. 
Of  course  this  vast  extent  of  operations  involved  complica- 
tions of  affairs,  and  jealousies  and  rivalries  in  the  manage- 
ment of  the  Company,  among  its  employes,  and  with  French 
and  afterwards  with  American  fur-traders.  It  is  not  strange, 
therefore,  that  most  of  the  books  just  referred  to  —  written 
by  the  servants  of  the  Company,  and  often  in  the  dreary  win- 
ter seclusion  of  its  posts  —  contain  free  and  not  unf requeritly 
severe  strictures  on  its  management.  Its  rapacity  and 
greed  in  mere  money-making,  its  partiality  in  distributing 
its  favors,  its  indifference  to  the  just  complaints  and  griev- 
ances of  its  servants,  and  its  utter  neglect  of  the  present 
and  prospective  welfare  of  the  savages,  whom  it  dealt  with 
only  with  reference  to  their  rich  spoils,  are  strongly  re- 
flected upon.  The  Company,  intrenched  in  its  chartered 
monopoly,  paid  slight  attention  to  these  charges.  The  mer- 
cantile interest  in  England  more  than  once  brought  about  a 


486  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Parliamentary  inquiry,  alleging  the  monopoly  and  the  inef- 
ficiency of  the  Company.  It  appeared  that  the  Company 
had  never  in  any  way  recognized  the  Indian  title  or  rights 
in  the  territory,  nor  made  any  attempt  to  extinguish  them. 
The  defence  was,  that,  as  it  was  not  a  colonizing  Com- 
pany, and  in  fact  had  always  discouraged  colonization, 
territorial  rights  were  not  essential  to  it.  This  defence 
induced  a  further  complaint.  The  Company  was  known  to 
oppose  and  thwart  all  attempts  at  exploring  the  country 
for  curiosity,  science,  or  any  other  purpose  that  would  inter- 
fere with  or  throw  light  upon  its  own  affairs.  To  meet 
these  charges  the  Company  sent  Samuel  Hearne,  who  had 
long  been  a  resident  agent,  to  make  a  journey  of  explora- 
tion to  the  Copper  Mine  River  and  to  seek  a  Northwest 
passage.  His  journey  was  between  1769  and  1772  ;  and  he 
tried  to  extenuate  the  complaints  against  the  Company  for 
selfishness  and  lack  of  enterprise,  made  by  Dobbs,  Ellis, 
Robson,  and  others  of  its  employe's.  He  was  absent  from 
the  post  nearly  nineteen  months ;  he  reached  the  river  and 
the  mines,  but  was  disappointed  in  the  results.  Being  an 
observing,  intelligent,  and  cautious  man  and  writer,  he 
made  a  close  study  of  Indian  life  and  character,  and  gave  a 
good  description  of  the  country,  its  animals,  and  products. 
He  somewhat  qualifies  the  reputed  sagacity  of  the  beaver, 
especially  as  regards  its  skill  in  the  use  of  its  tail  as  a 
trowel.  He  shows  how  readily  a  white  man  could  conform 
himself  to  the  habits  of  an  Indian.  He  was  unable  to  hu- 
manize his  savage  companions,  or  to  dissuade  them  from 
inflicting  a  most  hideous  massacre  on  the  Esquimaux  whom 
they  met  upon  the  coast. 

While  the  Company  had  thwarted  any  attempt  to  obtain 
information  about  the  Indians  in  the  interior,  in  order  that 
their  territory  might  be  kept  simply  as  a  preserve  for  fur- 
bearing  animals,  the  French  from  Canada  were  pushing 
their  influence  and  enterprise.  La  Salle  had  first  conceived 
and  executed  the  design  of  opening  a  way  through  the  con- 


THE  HUDSON  BAY  COMPANY.  487 

tineiit  from  north  to  south,  and  the  French  in  1731  were 
the  first  of  white  men  to  penetrate  to  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
So  far  as  the  natives  were  made  parties  to  the  struggles 
and  rivalries  of  the  different  traders,  the  influence  upon 
them  was  simply  demoralizing.  The  keenest  of  the  traders 
and  of  their  employe's  would  endeavor  near  some  carry- 
ing-place to  intercept  a  band  of  savages  with  their  pel- 
tries, on  their  route  to  the  centre  of  their  supplies,  where 
they  were  under  contract  for  credit  given  to  make  a  return. 
Where  other  temptations  offered  to  them  failed,  rum  was 
generally  found  to  serve  the  purpose.  Those  inner  reaches 
of  the  continent,  once  wildernesses  impenetrated  except  by 
savages,  have  cast  the  shadows  of  oblivion  over  many  dis- 
mal tragedies  of  violence  and  suffering. 

Edward  Umfreville,  -who  had  been  eleven  years  in  the 
service  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  and  four  years  inde- 
pendently in  the  Canada  fur-trade,  published  a  volume  in 
London,  in  1790,  on  the  state  of  the  Company  at  that  time. 
The  book  is  judiciously  and  temperately  written ;  but  is 
very  searching  and  severe  in  its  strictures  upon  the  man- 
agement of  the  monopoly.  He  says  that  every  one  of  its 
servants  that  has  written  upon  it  has  censured  or  con- 
demned it.  When  he  was  in  its  service  in  1771,  the  Com- 
pany employed  two  ships  and  a  sloop,  —  all  less  than  six 
hundred  tons,  —  to  bring  merchandise  and  to  take  home 
peltry.  Their  crews  being  seventy-five,  and  there  being 
only  315  employes  resident,  he  thought  this  was  a  pitiful 
company  for  such  a  privilege  and  realm.  In  1749  Arthur 
Dobbs  and  others  had  appealed  to  the  House  of  Commons 
for  an  investigation,  with  a  view  to  break  the  monopoly 
which  restricted  such  a  privilege,  and  to  lay  open  the  char- 
tered territory  to  the  trade  of  the  nation  at  large.  But  the 
attempt  was  thwarted  by  the  Company.  Though  the  char- 
ter enjoined  kindness  to  the  Indians,  and  the  reclaiming 
them  to  Christianity  and  civilization,  Umfreville  says  the 
injunction  was  set  at  nought.  The  Company  then  really 


488  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND    THE   INDIANS. 

consisted  of  but  seven  persons,  and  was  acting  illegally,  as 
the  time  for  which  Parliament  had  renewed  its  charter  had 
expired. 

As  has  been  said,  the  profits  of  the  traffic  were  enormous, 
as  may  be  inferred  when  we  read  that  a  good  gun,  costing 
twenty-seven  shillings  sterling,  sold  for  twenty  beaver  skins, 
valued  at  .£25  ;  and  two  yards  of  cloth,  costing  twelve  shil- 
lings, were  exchanged  for  £10  in  beaver.  At  first  a  single 
ship  was  annually  sent  from  England  to  the  Bay,  and  win- 
tered in  the  ice  of  some  sheltered  inlet ;  but  it  being  found 
that  a  vessel  could  go  in,  exchange  cargoes,  and  return 
within  the  year,  a  gratuity  of  £50  was  given  to  the  master 
who  accomplished  the  feat.  The  rivalry  of  the  French  in 
Canada  with  the  interests  of  the  Company  was  very  soon 
experienced,  as  the  Indians  were  early  provided  with  French 
guns  and  found  to  have  a  smattering  of  French  words.  The 
number  of  half-breeds,  French  and  Indian  in  blood,  was 
another  significant  token.  The  operations  of  the  Company 
gave  service  and  training  to  that  remarkable  class  of  men, 
daring,  skilful,  patient,  and  all-enduring,  —  as  much  the 
growth  and  product  of  forest  and  wilderness  as  the  wild 
beasts, —  who  have  been  referred  to  as  "coureurs  de  bois," 
"  voyageurs,"  etc.,  who  assimilated  all  the  traits  and  qual- 
ities of  the  Indian,  with  the  addition  of  some  special  acute- 
ness  and  versatility  of  their  own.  These  "  voyageurs,"  for 
the  most  part  half-breeds,  with  a  complement  of  the  natives 
and  in  company  with  an  agent  from  one  of  the  factories, 
would  course  the  way  between  the  posts,  navigating  the 
rivers  and  lakes,  carrying  their  burdens,  peltries,  and  ca- 
noes over  the  portages,  and  employing  dogs  to  drag  their 
loaded  sledges  over  the  snow.  They  were  a  wild  and  daring 
and  self-reliant  race,  capable  of  enduring  exhaustive  fa- 
tigue and  sharp  extremities  of  cold  and  hunger.  They 
had  their  intervals  of  fun  and  license,  of  feasting  and  danc- 
ing, and  riotous  and  reckless  living  at  the  posts,  and  the 
solaces  without  all  of  the  responsibilities  of  matrimony. 


489 

When  the  natives  came  to  the  posts,  bringing  the  pro- 
ducts of  their  hunting  and  trapping  from  far-off  swamps 
and  forests,  business  was  postponed  till  they  had  in- 
dulged in  a  wild  drinking-bout.  Liquor  made  them  fu- 
rious, and  turned  them  into  fiends  incarnate,  desperate 
and  murderous  to  all  within  their  reach;  so  that  this 
drunken  and  reckless  riot  was  prepared  for  by  the  squaws, 
by  taking  away  and  hiding  all  the  weapons  of  their  lords 
and  masters. 

The  name  "  fire-water  "  has  a  most  expressive  significa- 
tion, and  a  pertinence  not  always  found  when  we  go  to  the 
roots  of  words.     A  cheap  and  maddening  kind  of  intoxicat- 
ing liquor,  manufactured  in  England,  was  brought  thence 
in  great  quantities  by  the  Company's  vessels,  and  distri- 
buted among  its  posts.     For  convenience  of  transport  by 
boat  or  portage,  it  was  divided  from  the  barrel  into  small 
kegs  or  runlets,  holding  one  or  two  gallons.     The  appre- 
ciable value  of   the   liquor   for   barter,  and   its   ferocious 
effects  upon  the  savages  in  its  full  proof,  soon  led  to  a 
custom  of  reducing  it  by  equal  or  larger  parts  of  water, 
so  that  the  contents  of  one  keg  might  be  parted  into  two 
or  three.     But  the  Indians  had  become  expert  enough  to 
test  the  deception.      The  reduced  commodity  palmed  on 
them  as  the  pure  article  would  extinguish  fire;   but  the 
real,  original,  true  stuff  would  support  a  flame.      Hence 
rightfully  the  term  "fire-water."      The  mischief  wrought 
by  intoxicating  liquors  among  the  Indians  has  had  a  more 
deadly  effect  upon  them  all  over  the  continent  than  has 
war,  or  the  small-pox,  or  the  plague.     Very  early  in  the 
operations  of   the  Hudson   Bay  Company,  restraints,  and 
then  an  interdict,  were  put  on  the  introduction  of  spiritu- 
ous liquors  among  the  Indians.     Occasionally  the  restric- 
tion may  have  availed,  but  for  the  most  part  it  was  futile. 
More  than  one  plain-spoken  savage  who  had  had  experi- 
ence of  this  "  fire-water  "  is  credited  with  this  description 
of  it:  "It  could  only  have  been  distilled  from  the  hearts 


490  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

of  wild-cats  and  the  tongues  of  women,  it  makes  me  so 
fierce  and  so  foolish." 

After  the  savages,  on  their  visit  to  the  trading-post,  had 
recovered  —  not  without  a  sense  of  shame  and  humiliation 
—  from  the  drinking-riot,  they  were  ready  for  business, 
tempted  by  the  sight  of  the  goods  in  the  store,  —  guns, 
ammunition,  clothes,  various  commodities,  and  bright  cali- 
coes, ribbons,  trinkets,  and  gewgaws  for  their  squaws. 
But  the  first  transaction  required  a  payment  of  their  debts, 
for  they  were  generally  a  year  behindhand,  having  on 
their  previous  visit  taken  up  goods  on  credit.  Generally, 
too,  they  were  honest  debtors,  bringing  with  them  enough 
beyond  their  obligations  to  insure  a  credit  in  excess  of 
their  surplus  for  another  season.  The  liquor  was  hidden 
away  during  these  transactions,  and  efforts  were  made  to 
prevent  the  draft  upon  what  they  might  carry  off  with  them 
till  they  had  gone  some  distance  from  the  trading-station. 
How  diligently  the  savages  followed  the  work  of  trapping 
beaver  alone  for  the  Company  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact, 
that,  in  the  year  1788,  more  than  127,000  skins  were  shipped 
to  London.  The  barter  business  at  the  posts  was  trans- 
acted by  the  aid  of  small  marked  sticks,  defining  values. 
These  were  given  to  the  Indians  according  to  the  matter  in 
their  packs,  and  then  received  back  again,  at  the  same  rate, 
for  the  goods  which  they  might  select  from  the  store-house. 
The  unit  of  value  was  the  beaver  skin,  other  peltries  being 
estimated  by  fractions  or  multiples  of  it.  The  packs  of 
goods  which  were  to  be  transferred  into  the  wilderness  and 
those  which  were  brought  out  of  it  were  generally  each  of 
them  a  hundred  pounds  in  weight,  with  reference  to  one  or 
two  of  them  being  slung  over  the  back  in  crossing  portages 
or  carrying-places  between  the  water-runs. 

Some  of  these  commercial  transits  were  made  when  the 
streams  were  open ;  others  in  the  depths  of  winter,  when 
the  frozen  surface  of  snow  in  the  wilderness  and  of  lakes 
and  streams  gave  a  zest  and  rapidity  to  the  journey. 


RIVALRIES   IN   THE   FUR-TRADE.  491 

Those  who,  by  the  comforts  of  the  winter  fireside,  enjoy 
reading  tales  of  adventure  or  descriptions  of  home  life  in 
far-off  solitudes  and  under  grim  and  perilous  surround- 
ings, will  find  the  Hudson  Bay  literature  a  rich  repository. 
How  some  of  those  young  men,  exiled  from  the  Scotch 
Islands,  made  life  tolerable  and  even  gay  in  those  posts, 
with  Christmas  festivities  and  on  occasions  of  arrivals  of 
mails,  of  supplies,  and  of  bands  of  trappers,  may  be  read 
in  many  graphic  and  truthful  relations. 

From  the  first  incorporation  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany there  were  constant  rivalries  and  feuds  between  its 
employe's  and  the  French  hunters  and  traders,  —  a  wild 
and  adventurous  race,  who  were  experts  and  heroes  in 
all  wilderness  prowess.  After  the  cession  of  Canada,  by 
conquest,  to  the  British,  in  1762,  the. French,  not  dislodged 
from  the  woods,  still  continued  the  fur-trade  through  the 
coureurs  de  bois.  The  English  monopoly  for  a  while  slack- 
ened in  its  vigor.  The  prize  at  stake,  however,  was  a 
tempting  one.  Individual  and  associated  enterprise,  in- 
volving fierce  altercations  and  treacherous  alliances  with 
the  Indians,  were  enlisted  in  the  fur-traffic.  In  1783  some 
merchants  of  Montreal  entered  into  a  partnership  company, 
and  in  1787  united  with  another,  thus  constituting  the 
famous  Northwest  Company.  It  was  for  a  time  very  pros- 
perous. It  had  twenty-three  shareholders  or  partners,  and 
employed  two  thousand  men  as  clerks,  guides,  interpreters, 
and  boatmen,  scattered  over  the  inner  lakes  and  rivers  at 
immense  distances  to  receive  peltries  and  distribute  sup- 
plies. As  no  attempt  was  made  by  the  foreign  agents  to 
colonize  or  permaneutly  occupy  Indian  territories,  but  as 
the  aim  was  to  keep  them  in  their  wild  state  for  hunting 
and  trapping,  the  natives  took  no  umbrage  against  the  in- 
truders, but  on  the  contrary,  learning  to  appreciate  and  to 
depend  upon  British  goods,  they  became  strongly  enlisted 
in  the  British  interest,  as  Americans  have  found  to  their 
cost.  The  Hudson  Bay  Company  supplied  the  Blackfoot. 


492  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Indians  of  the  far  West  with  fire-arms.  Their  enemies,  the 
Snake  tribes,  tried  to  procure  the  same  implements  from 
the  Spaniards  in  California;  but  as  the  latter  wisely  re- 
fused, the  Blackfeet  crushed  the  Snakes. 

In  1796  the  United  States  Government  became  jealous  of 
this  absorption  of  the  internal  Indian  trade  by  foreigners, 
and  sent  out  its  own  agents  with  supplies  to  engage  in  it. 
But  these  agents  proved  slack  and  inefficient.  John  Jacob 
Astor  and  others  thus  found  their  prompting  to  undertake 
the  traffic.  Mr.  Astor,  in  17 94,  was  the  agent  in  London  of 
a  fur-trader.  In  1807,  entering  the  business  on  his  own 
account,  he  was  thwarted  by  the  rival  Mackinaw  Com- 
pany. In  1809  he  got  a  charter  from  New  York  for  the 
"  American  Fur  Company,"  with  a  capital  of  a  million  dol- 
lars, all  held  by  himself.  The  enterprise  of  that  rich  mer- 
chant for  planting  a  great  trading  settlement  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Columbia,  for  commerce  with  the  eastern  continent 
and  islands,  and  for  the  internal  fur-trade,  has  found  a  fas- 
cinating relator  in  Washington  Irving.  A  series  of  cross- 
purposes,  plunders,  wrecks,  disasters,  and  catastrophes  of 
every  shape  and  kind  overwhelmed  the  enterprise,  and  Eng- 
lish rivals  came  in  for  the  reward.  The  overland  party, 
which  was  to  join  at  the  post  the  other  party  which  went 
by  sea,  was  under  the  guidance  of  Captain  Hunt,  took 
eleven  months  for  crossing  the  country,  travelling  3,500 
miles,  double  the  distance  in  a  straight  line,  and  exhibited 
heroic  effort  and  endurance. 

Irving  thinks  it  marvellous  that  so  many  Indians  should 
have  survived  at  the  West,  considering  the  stern  conditions 
of  their  life,  their  fierce  wars  with  each  other,  fragments  of 
almost  extinct  tribes  timidly  cowering  in  mountain  fast- 
nesses and  wasted  by  the  ravages  of  the  small-pox.  Even 
their  names  bear  witness  to  their  degradation,  —  such  as 
Flatheads,  Blackfeet,  Crows,  Pierced  Noses,  Big  Bellies, 
and  Snakes. 

The   circumstances  under   which  those  vast   inner   ex- 


THE   BED   RIVER   SETTLEMENT.  493 

panses  of  mountain,  plain,  lake,  river,  valley,  and  hill  have 
been  visited  by  the  wild,  lawless,  and  desperate  roamers 
have  attached  to  the  localities  names  often  vulgar,  low,  and 
filthy.  These  offensive  names  ought  not  to  be  retained  to 
degrade  and  vilify  the  regions,  often  so  fair  and  sublime, 
especially  as  the  Indian  names  which  they  displace  are  so 
beautiful  and  fitting.  Why  call  the  grand  summits  the 
Rocky  Mountains  ?  All  mountains  are  rocky.  The  Indian 
name  for  them  is  the  Chippewyan. 

The  once  famous  Red  River  Settlement,  another  enter- 
prise not  of  the  British  Government,  but  of  its  subjects, 
dates  from  1811.  The  Earl  of  Selkirk,  Thomas  Douglas, 
a  large  proprietor  in  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  purchased 
from  it  and  from  the  Cree  and  Sauteux  or  Ojibwa  Indians, 
for  an  annuity  of  one  hundred  pounds  of  tobacco  to  each, — 
not  a  very  generous  equivalent,  —  land  on  both  banks  of 
the  Red  River  and  the  Assiniboine.  This  had  long  been  in 
its  undisturbed  wilderness  condition  as  a  mere  preserve  of 
the  fur-bearing  animals.  It  was  roamed  over  by  wandering 
Indians,  who  visited  the  trading-posts  of  the  employe's  of 
the  two  rival  companies, — the  Hudson  Bay  and  the  North- 
west. The  enormous  herds  of  buffalo  which  once  coursed 
it  have  disappeared.  The  settlers  under  Selkirk  were 
Scotch.  They  planted  themselves  on  the  soil  with  many 
discomfitures  and  hardships.  Being  under  the  patronage  of 
the  Bay  Company  they  were  attacked  by  those  in  the  inter- 
est of  the  Northwest  Company,  Canadians  and  half-breeds, 
and  twice  driven  from  their  settlement.  On  their  return 
for  a  third  trial,  grasshoppers  and  myriads  of  blackbirds 
consumed  their  growing  crops  and  reduced  them  to  famine. 
Not  till  1821,  after  nine  years  of  sturdy  toil  against  all  ob- 
stacles, did  the  enterprise  become  in  a  measure  successful. 
The  two  rival  fur-companies  formed  a  coalition.  In  1835 
the  Bay  Company  purchased  the  Red  River  Settlement  of 
Lord  Selkirk's  executors.  He  had  spent  upon  his  colony 
£ 85,000  sterling.  Near  Opashkwa  Lake,  in  the  Red  River 


494  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Territory,  is  the  height  of  land,  the  dividing  ridge,  which 
parts  the  waters  flowing  into  the  Hudson  Bay  and  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  region  at  the  time  were  of  as  mot- 
ley and  miscellaneous  a  make-up  as  any  extensive  region 
of  the  earth  would  have  afforded,  —  Canadians,  half-breeds, 
Indians,  and  naked,  painted,  and  feathered  savages  strut- 
ting and  fuming,  voyageurs,  farmers,  hunters  fishermen, 
furnished  with  missionaries  of  rival  creeds,  and  not  without 
means  of  education.  Groups  of  human  dwellings  presented 
the  strongest  contrast  as  between  well-furnished  and  well- 
stocked  houses  and  farm-barns  and  the  filthiest,  dreariest 
cabins  and  wigwams.  Any  of  the  Indians  who  were  in- 
clined to  adopt  the  usages  of  civilization  had  the  progres- 
sive stages  of  it  set  before  them  and  facilitated,  all  the 
way  up  from  and  all  the  way  down  to  barbarism.  Many  of 
the  settlers,  however,  were  faithful  to  their  Indian  wives, 
sought  to  raise  them  and  their  habits  and  mode  of  life,  and 
sent  their  half-blood  offspring  to  Canada  and  Europe  for 
education. 

The  object  of  the  British  traders  was  to  open  a  road  from 
Lake  Superior  through  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  British 
Columbia,  for  direct  commerce  with  China,  which  was  the 
market  for  the  costliest  furs.  From  the  Saskatchewan  Val- 
ley all  the  way  to  the  mountains  only  the  agents  of  the 
Bay  Company  wandered.  The  region  covered  an  area  of 
65,000  square  miles,  or  forty  million  acres,  much  of  it  rich 
soil.  It  is  this  region,  now  the  Province  of  Manitoba, 
which  under  the  prompting  and  enterprise  of  land  compa- 
nies, vigorously  pressed,  is  fast  becoming  populous  with 
settlers,  and  giving  promise  of  vast  prosperity.  A  just  and 
reasonable  energy,  not  necessarily  involving  any  jealousy, 
is  engaged  in  this  enterprise  to  offer  inducements  to  colo- 
nists under  Great  Britain  to  stay  on  their  own  territory  in- 
stead of  making  preference  of  that  of  the  United  States. 
Not  by  any  means,  however,  is  this  preference  overcome  in 


SAVAGE   ALLIES   OP  GREAT   BRITAIN.  495 

all  cases.  Still,  with  largesses  and  other  inducements 
offered,  not  only  to  British  but  to  other  peoples,  the  enter- 
prise is  full  of  promise.  Settlers  from  Russia,  companies 
of  Memnonites,  and  others  from  Iceland,  are  in  thrifty 
communities  on  the  spot.  The  project  of  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway  to  British  Columbia  is  one  which  will  task 
the  funds  of  its  proprietors.  These  enterprises  will  be 
found  to  bring  British  subjects  into  those  more  intimate 
and  disturbing  relations  with  the  natives  which  have  occa- 
sioned so  many  collisions  between  them  and  our  people  and 
Government.  It  remains  to  be  seen  if  the  British  will  pre- 
vail with  a  policy  more  just  and  pacific  than  our  own. 
Certainly  they  have  an  opportunity  to  improve  upon  our 
methods  and  doings,  and  our  experience  may  be  a  part  of 
their  practical  discretion. 

But  whatever  may  be  truthfully  said  about  the  greater 
wisdom  or  humanity  of  the  official  dealings  of  Great  Brit- 
ain witli  our  Indians,  the  pages  of  authentic  history  are 
deeply  stained  for  our  mother  country  by  the  course  pur- 
sued by  her  agents  in  the  use  they  made  of  the  savages 
alike  in  the  war  of  the  Revolution  and  in  the  war  of  1312. 
At  the  outbreak  of  the  former  war  England  had  already 
under  her  alliance  and  service  nearly  all  the  neighboring 
Indian  tribes.  Such  of  them  as  had  previously  aided  the 
French,  and  as  had  been  concerned  in  Pontiac's  conspiracy, 
had  been  mostly  won  over  or  crushed.  But  the  moment  the 
colonies  opened  the  rebellion  Christian  England,  not  content 
with  the  aid  of  mercenaries  from  the  European  continent, 
regarded  every  red  man  in  our  forests  as  fit  and  helpful 
material  for  a  border  warfare  of  burnings  and  massacres. 
And  nearly  all  the  tribes  within  reach  of  her  call  answered 
to  it.  It  is  difficult  to  trace,  in  her  method  of  enlisting 
Indian  allies  and  directing  their  savage  instincts  against 
her  rebellious  provinces,  any  feeling  of  humanity  or  any 
purpose  of  benefiting  the  natives.  We  certainly  cannot  at 
this  point  discern  any  greater  consideration  on  her  part 


496  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

than  on  our  own  towards  them.  Nor  can  we  find  at  this 
crisis  the  beginning  of  what  is  claimed  as  her  more  wise 
and  merciful  policy. 

The  opening  of  our  Revolutionary  War  was  the  occasion 
of  yet  another  of  the  aggravated  issues  in  which,  by  a  long 
series,  the  interests  of  the  white  and  red  men  have  clashed 
ever  since  their  first  contact  on  this  continent.  In  all  the 
conflicts  for  possession  and  empire  on  our  soil  the  rival 
European  colonists  —  as  we  have  had  already  many  evi- 
dences —  sought,  and  always  with  success,  to  secure  their 
respective  supporters  and  allies  from  the  Indian  tribes 
whom  they  could  influence,  and  also  to  set  those  tribes 
against  each  other  in  quarrels  of  their  own.  Our  quarrel 
with  the  mother  country  was  a  matter  of  amazement  to  the 
Indians  on  our  borders,  and  it  was  long  before  they  under- 
stood its  causes,  could  appreciate  all  its  bearings  and  con- 
sequences, and  decide  the  course  which  they  should  wisely 
pursue  with  a  view  to  their  own  interests.  Only  twelve 
years  before,  they  had  seen  the  close  of  a  seven  years'  war, 
which  was  in  fact  but  the  consummation  of  a  struggle  run- 
ning,—  as  has  been  repeatedly  stated, — with  brief  lulls  and 
truces,  through  a  century  and  a  half,  between  the  French 
and  the  English  for  mastery  here.  In  that  protracted  strife, 
especially  in  the  fierce  war  which  brought  it  to  a  close,  with 
complete  victory  for  the  English  crown,  the  Frencli  had 
had  a  great  predominancy  of  influence  over,  and  of  efficient 
help  from,  the  red  men.  Indeed,  we  call  that  series  of 
struggles  by  the  name  of  our  French  and  Indian  War. 

The  British  authorities,  during  that  war,  had  come  fully 
to  appreciate  the  importance  to  them  of  strengthening  their 
influence  and  alliance  with  Indian  tribes.  The  agency 
which  they  established  for  that  purpose  in  Eastern  New 
York  proved  of  substantial  use  to  them;  and  the  great 
popularity  which  the  Johnsons  secured,  especially  among 
the  Mohawks,  was  turned  to  good  account.  Of  course  the 
cause  of  the  colonies  up  to  this  time  had  been  a  common 


SAVAGES   AS   NEUTRALS   OR   ALLIES.  497 

one  with  that  of  England.  But  a  new  role  was  now  to 
open.  All  the  prestige  and  favor  which  British  patronage 
and  pay  had  won  among  the  native  tribes  were  likely  now 
to  swell  the  preponderance  of  power  against  the  rebellious 
colonists.  It  became  the  latter  to  anticipate  the  threatened 
evil  from  this  quarter.  We  were  to  have  a  contemptuous, 
arrogant,  embittered,  and  vigorous  enemy  on  our  coasts, 
seeking  also  at  various  points  to  penetrate  into  the  interior. 
Should  we  have  likewise  wily  foes,  murderous,  prowling, 
savage  allies  with  that  enemy  behind  our  borders,  —  apt 
for  all  stratagems,  haunting  the  woods,  burning  our  inner 
settlements,  and  inflaming  rebellion  with  untold  horrors  ? 
This  element  in  the  apprehensions  and  disasters  of  our 
Revolutionary  conflict  has  been  too  often  overlooked  in  our 
histories.  To  all  of  our  people  distant  from  the  seaboard  it 
was  the  aggravation  of  their  severest  dreads  and  sufferings. 
There  have  been  many  critical  occasions  in  the  earlier  his- 
tory of  European  nationalities  on  this  continent  when  the 
savage  tribes  held  something  like  what  we  call  the  balance 
of  power,  as  a  third  party.  It  was  of  paramount  impor- 
tance, therefore,  in  the  strifes  of  rivals  and  in  our  civil 
conflicts,  to  secure  for  either  party  their  alliance  or  their 
neutrality.  The  English  had  sought  this  advantage  against 
the  French;  and  in  turn  the  rebelling  colonists  sought  it 
against  the  English.  Our  first  Congress  hoped  for  nothing 
more  than  the  neutrality  of  the  Indians,  who  could  do  us 
most  harm.  Knowing  how  dependent  they  had  become 
on  the  English  in  the  French  war,  Congress  could  hardly 
ask  them  to  take  up  the  hatchet  against  England.  They 
therefore  asked  the  Indians  merely  to  look  on  the  strife  as 
a  family  quarrel,  and  to  keep  still  in  their  lodges.  While" 
commissioners  were  working  for  this  end,  the  wanton  ag- 
gressions and  murders  perpetrated  in  1774  by  Colonel 
Cresap's  band,  on  the  northwest  border  of  Virginia,  stirred' 
the  rage  of  the  friendly  chiefs  Logan  and  Cornstork,  and  so^ 
alarmed  their  people  as  to  make  a  grievous  difficulty  for  our 


498  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Government.      An   Indian   department   was   organized   in 

1775,  and  its  direct  aim  was  to  thwart  the  intrigues  of  Sir 
John   Johnson,    Guy   Johnson,  and   the   famous   Mohawk 
chief,  Joseph  Brant,  who  held  a  British   commission   in 
engaging  the  natives.     Brant,  who  was  a  great  warrior  and 
had  a  wide  range  among  the  tribes,  with  whom  he  had 
done  much  civil  business,  was  a  formidable  foe  to  the  colo- 
nists.     The  Six  Nations  at  first  agreed   to  a  neutrality. 
The  river  Indians  favored  the  colonists,  as  did  the  Oneidas ; 
the    Cawnawagas   were   halting ;    the   Delawares,   neutral. 
But  the  fickle  and  inconstant  natives,  governed  by  caprice 
and  impulse,  could  be  but  little  depended  on.     Thus  we 
had  around  us  all  the  elements  of  a  twofold  civil  war.     Our 
temporary  success  in  Canada  was  followed  by  disasters,  the 
sharpest  of  which  was  the  affair  at  the  "  Cedars,"  in  May, 

1776.  The  policy  of   Congress  was   now  changed   from 
seeking  the  neutrality  of  the  Six  Nations  and  other  tribes 
to  attempts  to  draw  them  into  active  allied  service,  under 
pay.     Though  Washington  favored  the  measure,  Schuyler 
opposed  it.     Both  parties  had  occasion  to  regret  the  alli- 
ance and  service  of  the  savages,  as  wholly  unmanageable, 
regardless  of  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare,  plundering,  riot- 
ing, and  carousing,  not  distinguishing  between  friend  and 
foe,  and  watching  the  changing  tide  of  fortune.     New  York 
and   Pennsylvania  bore   the  sharpest   penalties   in  broils, 
murders,  burnings,  and  massacres  from  this  partition  of 
ferocious  barbarians  in  the  strifes  of  civilized  men.     The 
Valley  of  Wyoming  has  had  its  tragic  woes  versified  in  a 
poem;  and  the  truth  compels  the  confession,  that  the  white 
matched  the  red  men  in  barbaric  deeds. 

We  have  to  recognize  the  fact  that  the  experience  which 
French  and  English  colonists  had  alike  had  of  the  cruel 
inhumanities  and  the  revolting  atrocities  of  Indian  warfare 
had  excited  among  them  a  dread  of  that  element  of  their 
quarrels,  and  even  what  may  be  called  scruples  of  con- 
science in  those  who  called  themselves  in  any  sense  Chris- 


BUKGOYNE'S  USE  OF  SAVAGES.  499 

tian  people,  as  to  the  employment  of  savages  as  allies. 
Especially  among  the  English  at  home  was  there  mani- 
fested at  the  time  a  strong  reluctance,  and  even  a  bold 
protest  and  opposition,  to  the  engagement  of  Indians  as 
mercenaries,  as  it  was  known  to  be  utterly  impracticable  to 
restrain  them  from  their  barbarities  within  the  rules  of 
what  is  called  civilized  warfare.  The  satire,  invective,  and 
denunciation  which  early  in  our  war  were  poured  out  upon 
Burgoyne,  for  his  employment  of  Indians  and  for  his  ab- 
surd proclamation  on  his  route,  might  be  regarded  as  the 
expression  of  a  widely  prevailing  sentiment  of  disapproba- 
tion and  disgust. 

Near  the  close  of  this  famous  and  fulsome  proclamation 
addressed  to  the  rebels  as  he  was  advancing  from  Ticon- 
deroga,  are  these  sentences  :  — 

"I  have  but  to  give  stretch  to  the  Indian  forces  under  my  direc- 
tion —  and  they  amount  to  thousands  —  to  overtake  the  hardened 
enemies  of  Great  Britain  and  America,  and  I  consider  them  the 
same  wherever  they  may  lurk.  .  .  .  The  messengers  of  justice  and 
of  wrath  await  them  in  the  field ;  and  devastation,  famine,  and 
every  concomitant  horror  that  a  reluctant  but  indispensable  prose- 
cution of  military  duty  must  occasion,  will  bar  the  way  to  their 
return."  1 

When  afterwards  defending  himself  for  enlisting  the  sav- 
ages, Burgoyne  said  "  he  spoke  daggers,  but  used  none." 
He  called  these  allies  "  at  best  a  necessary  evil ; "  and  he 
said  their  blood-thirsty  and  plundering  propensities,  which 
he  could  not  restrain,  far  exceeded  the  worth  of  their 
services. 

1  Life  and  Correspondence  of  the  Right  Honorable  John  Burgoyne,  p.  492. 
By  E.  B.  De  Fonblanque.  London,  1876. 

tn  a  rebel  parody  of  this  proclamation  is  the  following  stanza  :  — 
"  I  will  let  loose  the  dogs  of  hell,  — 
Ten  thousand  Indians,  who  shall  yell 
And  foam  and  tear  and  grin  and  roar, 
And  drench  their  moccasons  in  gore; 
To  them  I  '11  give  full  scope  and  play 
From  Ticonderog'  to  Florida." 


500  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Still,  whatever  may  have  been  the  extent  and  influence 
of  such  a  feeling,  it  did  not  avail  to  deter  the  British  war 
secretary  from  bribing,  enlisting,  and  infuriating  Indian 
allies  against  us.  But  if  any  among  the  English  wished 
and  desired  that  the  controversy  between  the  rebelling  col- 
onists and  the  King  might  be  tried  and  settled  without 
calling  into  it  the  tomahawks,  the  scalping-knives,  and  the 
torches  of  the  fiends  of  the  forest,  how  much  more  might 
our  own  people,  who  knew  so  well  what  Indian  warfare 
was,  shrink  from  and  try  to  avert  the  worst  of  their  threat- 
ened perils ! 

Of  course  there  has  been  the  usual  charging  and  counter- 
charging of  American  and  British  partisan  historical  writ- 
ers as  to  which  of  the  contending  parties  was  first  in  the 
enlistment  of  savage  allies.  It  seems  strange  that  the  mat- 
ter should  not  have  been  regarded  as  settled  by  precedent 
on  both  sides.  It  was  said  in  Parliament,  when  the  meas- 
ure was  under  discussion,  that  Congress  had  already  got 
the  start  in  that  policy.  Still,  the  British  war  minister 
was  sharply  rebuked  in  the  House  of  Lords  on  account  of 
his  savage  allies,  though  they  had  been  advised  by  Bur- 
goyne  to  restrain  their  ferocity.  The  Earl  of  Chatham 
poured  forth  his  indignation  so  fiercely  that  it  was  said 
that  the  tapestry-figures  on  the  walls  listened  with  frowns 
on  their  faces.  Burke  thus  sarcastically  illustrated  the 
appeal  to  the  savages'  humanity  :  — 

"Suppose  there  was  a  riot  on  Tower  Hill.  What  would  the 
keeper  of  his  Majesty's  lions  do  1  Would  he  not  fling  open  the  dens 
of  the  wild  beasts,  and  then  address  them  thus :  '  My  gentle  Lions, 
my  humane  Bears,  my  tender-hearted  Hyenas,  go  forth  !  but  I  ex- 
hort you,  as  you  are  Christians  and  members  of  civilized  society,  to 
take  care  not  to  hurt  any  man,  woman,  or  child.'  "  1 

Our  people  had  to  start  in  the  conflict  under  the  reason- 
able and  dread  apprehension  that  they  would  have  to  con- 

1  Horace  Walpole's  Letters,  Cunningham's  ed.,  vol.  vii.  p.  29. 


501 

tend  with  savage  foes  who  had  so  recently  been  in  the  pay 
and  service  of  Britain  against  the  French.  The  Provincial 
Congress  of  Massachusetts  had  exercised  their  forethought 
upon  this  matter  before  the  opening  of  hostilities.  A  com- 
pany of  Stockbridge  Indians  had  been  engaged  as  minute- 
men,  and  were  stationed  at  Watertown.  It  was  known  that 
we  had  sympathizers  in  Canada ;  and  the  Provincial  Con- 
gress addressed  a  letter  in  April,  1775,  to  one  of  our  mis- 
sionaries among  the  Six  Nations  in  Western  New  York, 
seeking  that  every  effort  should  be  used  to  engage  the  good 
feeling,  and  if  possible  the  active  help,  of  the  tribes  on  our 
side,  or,  if  that  was  impracticable,  at  least  to  secure  their 
neutrality.  British  agents,  however,  had  already  the  start 
of  us  in  that  scheme,  and  attained  considerable  success,  so 
that  even  among  the  tribes  from  which  we  might  have 
looked  for  aid,  as  well  as  from  all  other  Indian  tribes,  the 
weight  was  against  us  during  the  whole  war. 

From  the  moment  in  which  Washington  took  command 
of  the  American  army  and  saw  his  work  before  him,  among 
the  perplexities  which  burdened  his  mind  was  this  of  the 
threatened  part  which  the  Indians  would  have  in  the  strife. 
Well  did  he  know  the  qualities  of  the  Indians  in  carnage 
and  battle,  whether  as  allies  or  foes.  He  also  put  himself 
in  correspondence  with  the  same  missionary,  Mr.  Kirkland, 
who  had  won  great  influence  among  the  Oneidas,  and  who 
visited  the  camp  at  Cambridge,  with  a  chief  and  others  of 
the  tribe,  whom  Washington  treated  with  wise  favor.  The 
second  Congress,  in  1775,  appointed  that  there  should  be 
three  Indian  Departments  in  its  service,  —  Northern,  Mid- 
dle, and  Southern,  —  with  Commissioners  for  each ;  and 
sent  an  address  to  the  Six  Nations,  in  which  they  were  told 
that  ours  was  a  family  quarrel,  that  had  no  concern  for 
them ;  that  they  were  not  asked  to  take  up  the  hatchet 
against  the  King's  troops,  but  only  to  be  strictly  neutral, 
keeping  quiet  at  home.  A  treaty  was  made  with  some  of 
them  that  effected  nothing,  for  the  sway  over  them  of  John- 


502  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND    THE   INDIANS. 

son  and  other  agents  was  supreme.  After  the  bloody  mas- 
sacre  at  the  Cedars,  where  Indians  under  a  British  officer 
murdered  several  American  prisoners,  Congress  took  active 
measures  to  enlist  and  employ  and  pay  the  natives  who 
were  willing  to  enter  our  service,  and  authorized  Washing- 
ten  to  follow  up  these  measures.  These  Indians  were  to 
receive  the  same  pay  as  our  own  soldiers,  with  extra  boun- 
ties for  British  prisoners.  Yet  we  had  through  the  whole 
war  but  very  little,  if  any,  help  from  the  forest  warriors. 
Rather  did  our  frontiers  suffer  devastation  and  many  a 
shuddering  horror  from  their  insidious  onsets,  as  they 
fought  from  a  love  of  cruelty,  and  their  ferocity  was  fed 
by  the  hope  of  plunder.  We  gave  the  British  the  odium 
for  instigating  these  atrocities,  and  rage  on  that  score 
helped  to  embitter  our  strife  as  it  proceeded.  Happily, 
among  the  causes  of  self-reproach  for  the  treatment  of  the 
Indians  by  our  Government,  we  have  not  to  add  that  of 
ingratitude  for  any  good  service  done  us  in  the  war,  either 
that  of  the  Revolution  or  that  of  1812.  This  ingratitude 
was  charged  severely  upon  the  British. 

Before  Congress  had  taken  the  steps  just  mentioned, 
the  subject  of  employing  the  Indians  had  been,  as  before 
stated,  under  warm  discussion  in  Parliament.  It  was 
known  that  the  ministry  had  authorized  their  generals 
here  to  engage  their  aid.  Burke,  in  denouncing  the  act 
as  criminal,  said  that  while  the  ministry  had  made 
such  alliances  through  the  whole  country,  the  Americans 
had  only  sought  from  the  Indians  promises  of  neutrality, 
which  British  officers  were  bribing  them  to  break.  He 
thought,  even,  that  the  Americans  would  be  more  justi- 
fied in  employing  their  savage  countrymen  against  armed 
and  trained  soldiers  than  the  British  were  in  goading  them 
against  poor  defenceless  men,  women,  and  children  in 
their  scattered  homes.  Lord  George  Germain,  the  war 
minister,  insisted  that  we  had  already  solicited  and  se- 
cured Indian  helpers  in  our  rebellion,  and  that  it  was  not 


MALIGNANT   POLICY.  503 

in  their  nature  to  remain  idle  and  neutral  when  a  fight 
was  going  on.  Lord  North  admitted  that  the  employment 
of  Indians  was  bad,  but  affirmed  that  it  was  unavoidable. 

Previous  to  the  confederation  of  the  thirteen  colonies 
each  one  of  them  had  assumed  control  of  the  natives  within 
its  bounds,  either  under  instructions  from  the  Crpwn,  or  by 
its  own  local  legislatures.  Our  records,  therefore,  contain 
a  long  series  of  stipulations,  provisional  arrangements,  and 
so-called  treaties  made  with  one  or  more  tribes,  disposing 
of  troublesome  issues  as  they  rose,  generally  by  a  bargain, 
the  consideration  in  which  was  either  paid  down  or  made 
a  matter  of  annuities  for  a  longer  or  a  shorter  period. 
When  the  English  took  possession  of  New  York,  over  the 
Dutch,  in  1664,  they  made  a  covenant  with  the  Five 
Nations,  which  continued  without  a  breach  substantially 
down  to  our  Revolution.  The  Indians  asked  to  have  the 
Duke  of  York's  arms  set  upon  their  "  castles."  But  this 
was  not  so  much  for  their  love  of  the  English  as  from  their 
fear  of  the  French.  On  this  ground  it  certainly  might  have 
seemed  that  if  either  the  mother  country  or  the  colonists 
were  entitled  to  such  benefit  as  might  come  from  an  Indian 
alliance,  the  former  party  was  entitled  to  it.  The  colonists 
would  have  been  more  than  content  with  the  absolute  neu- 
trality of  the  savages ;  but  as  this  could  not  be  secured, 
the  result  was  but  one  more  of  the  aggravations  of  what 
was  so  often  spoken  of  as  "  the  unnatural  quarrel  between 
mother  and  daughter."  Candor  will  urge,  and  will  scarcely 
grudge  to  allow,  in  a  comparison  of  the  treatment  of  the 
natives  respectively  by  Great  Britain  and  by  our  Govern- 
ment, that,  in  the  matters  of  difficulty  and  responsibility 
when  the  Indians  fell  into  our  hands,  our  case  had  been 
sadly  complicated  and  prejudiced  by  the  state  in  which 
Britain  had  left  her  red  allies.  These  malign  influences 
affected  our  first  treaty  relations  with  the  Indian  tribes 
nearest  to  us,  which  began  under  the  confederation  in 
1778.  These  were  designed,  as  has  been  said,  to  secure 


504  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

either  the  alliance  of  the  natives  or  their  neutrality.  Of 
course,  the  tribes  with  whom  we  first  formed  treaties  were 
few,  and  were  on  our  immediate  borders.  Till  the  begin- 
ning of  this  century  the  treaties  were  almost  wholly  con- 
fined to  Indians  on  this  side  of  the  Mississippi,  after  its 
confluence^  with  the  Ohio,  and  down  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 
Till  quite  recently  these  treaties  have  been  steadily  multi- 
plying with  natives  on  further  reaches  of  territory,  and 
judging  by  the  increase  of  new  tribal  names  on  our  records 
one  would  suppose  that  we  have  come  into  contact  with 
thickening  multitudes  of  them.  There  was  always  an  over- 
estimate of  the  number  of  Indians  on  our  soil ;  and  this 
over-estimate  has  been  helped  in  our  days  by  the  greed  of 
agents,  guardians,  and  bounty  distributors,  interested  to 
make  the  number  of  their  wards  as  large  as  possible.  The 
census  of  1850  was  the  first  in  which  the  United  States 
Government  made  a  systematic  effort  for  anything  like  ex- 
actness in  estimating  the  Indians  within  its  borders.  Sepa- 
rate censuses  had  at  times  been  made  by  the  colonies.  The 
annexation  of  States  and  Territories  —  as  Florida,  Texas, 
and  California  —  has  of  course  swollen  the  Indian  census. 

During  the  war  of  the  Revolution  we  found,  as  we  had 
every  reason  to  expect,  that  the  savage  allies  of  our  British 
foes,  continually  plied  by  active  agents  among  them,  under 
good  pay,  and  well  supplied  with  arms,  were,  and  were 
long  afterwards  to  be,  a  pestering  and  destructive  enemy. 
The  confederation  had  committed  to  it  the  oversight  and 
management  of  the  Indians,  and  the  power  to  make  com- 
pacts and  treaties  with  them.  It  accomplished  a  great  deal 
of  hard  work  in  this  direction,  and  negotiated  many  trea- 
ties, such  as  they  were,  securing  by  purchase  more  than  a 
hundred  million  acres.  It  came  into  collision,  however,  with 
the  claims  and  rights  asserted  by  the  States  and  Territories, 
though  at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution 
all  these  disputes  had  been  adjusted,  save  those  with  North 
Carolina  and  Georgia.  Only  the  Iroquois  and  the  Chero- 


GENERAL   SULLIVAN'S   CAMPAIGN.  505 

kees  were  then  left  as  tribes  still  of  much  consequence  or 
strength  within  State  bounds.  Through  all  these  negotia- 
tions down  to  the  very  latest,  we  encountered  obstacles  and 
perplexities  entailed  upon  us  by  the  previous  relations  and 
measures  of  England  towards  the  savages.  These  consid- 
erations are  fairly  to  be  taken  into  account  in  comparing 
the  Indian  policy  of  the  two  Governments,  in  view  of  the 
circumstances  presented  to  each  of  them. 

In  1779  General  Sullivan,  with  a  force  of  four  thousand 
continentals,  went  to  chastise  the  Indians  of  the  Six  Nations 
under  the  lead  of  the  Chief  Brant,  Sir  John  Johnson,  and 
other  Tories,  as  hostile  British  allies.  Sullivan  was  suc- 
cessful in  dealing  a  severe  blow,  and  destroying  the  Indian 
settlements.  The  instructions  given  to  Sullivan  by  Wash- 
ington for  the  conduct  of  this  expedition  are  so  severe  and 
imperative  in  their  terms,  coming  from  so  humane  and 
righteous-hearted  a  chief,  as  to  prove  how  his  spirit  had 
been  stirred  by  the  sharp  exigencies  of  the  struggle.  These 
Six  Nations,  with  meagre  exceptions,  goaded  on  to  inhuman 
excesses  even  for  warfare  by  their  British  instigators,  were 
to  be  dealt  with  in  a  way  to  curb  them  from  any  further 
mischief.  Sullivan  was  to  listen  to  no  appeal  from  them, 
to  make  no  terms  with  them,  to  accept  no  profession  or  act 
of  submission  or  surrender,  till  he  had  completely  destroyed 
their  towns  and  devastated  their  growing  crops,  so  as  to 
reduce  them  to  a  state  of  utter  destitution,  with  no  means 
of  recuperation  for  the  immediate  future.  The  General 
carried  out  his  instructions  to  the  letter.  Only  he  failed 
of  one  of  the  objects  which  Washington  desired  to  realize; 
namely,  obtaining  possession,  as  prisoners,  of -the  Johnsons, 
Butlers,  and  Brant,  the  main  instigators  of  the  savages. 

Another  large  abatement  which  truth  requires  us  to 
make  from  the  claim  of  Great  Britain  to  a  more  politic  and 
humane  dealing  with  the  Indians,  is  because  of  the  ungrate- 
ful and  heartless  manner  in  which  she  abandoned  the  tribes 
that  had  suffered  from  alliance  with  her  at  the  close  of  our 


506  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Revolutionary  War.  The  first,  the  chief,  the  longest  pro- 
tracted, and  the  most  harrassing  of  our  relations  with  the 
savages,  at  the  beginning  of  our  separate  nationality,  is  di- 
rectly chargeable  upon  the  course  pursued  by  the  British 
Government;  and  for  two  reasons.  First,  the  large  majority 
of  the  Indian  tribes  had  during  the  war  been  in  the  ser- 
vice and  pay  of  Great  Britain.  They  did  faithful  service, 
too,  under  the  alarms  and  atrocities  of  which  the  colonists 
smarted.  They  fought,  and  multitudes  of  their  warriors 
died,  for  the  British,  whose  officials  had  promised  by  solemn 
covenant,  at  the  opening  of  the  war,  that  all  their  losses  by 
the  alliance  should  be  made  good  to  them,  whatever  the  re- 
sult of  the  conflict.  But  in  the  treaty  of  peace  acknowl- 
edging our  independence,  Great  Britain  made  no  mention 
whatever  of  these  her  red  allies,  required  of  us  no  terms  on 
their  behalf,  or  lenience  or  pardon  to  them,  made  them  no 
compensation,  except  as  she  held  them  for  further  mischief 
against  us,  and  left  them  maddened  and  hungry  on  our 
hands. 

Again,  the  territorial  boundaries  which  Britain  granted 
to  her  freed  colonies  in  America  took  in  the  ancient  hunt- 
ing-grounds of  the  Six  Nations  and  other  tribes,  which  she 
had  no  right  to  give  away ;  and  by  retaining  the  Lake  and 
Western  posts  which  she  had  agreed  to  surrender,  she 
fomented  all  sorts  of  strifes  for  us  with  the  savages.  It 
was  by  the  sinister  influence  which  she  continued  to  exer- 
cise over  the  Indians  within  our  own  bounds  that  Britain 
was  able,  down  to  and  inclusive  of  the  war  of  1812,  to 
give  us  constant  and  costly  trouble  with  tribes  instigated 
and  paid  by  her. 

When  the  English  obtained  the  transfer  of  the  Dutch 
colony  of  New  York,  in  1664,  the  Six  Nations  had  come 
under  her  protection  against  the  French,  the  Hurons,  and 
the  Algonquins  of  Canada.  A  very  complicated  arrange- 
ment ensued.  England  recognized  in  terms  the  territorial 
rights  of  the  natives,  but  claimed  a  right  of  pre-emption 


EMBARRASSED  RELATIONS.  507 

over  all  other  intending  purchasers.  This  right  was  made 
over  to  us ;  but  under  the  loose  articles  of  our  Confedera- 
tion, the  consequent  pre-emptory  privileges  belonged  to  the 
respective  States  within  which  the  lands  lay.  So  in  the  Leg- 
islature of  New  York,  acting  under  the  assumption  that  in 
subduing  Great  Britain  and  her  Indian  allies  that  State 
had  come  into  possession  of  the  Indian's  lands,  there  were 
some  who  proposed  to  drive  off  the  Six  Nations  from  their 
remaining  territory.  A  similar  measure,  on  like  grounds, 
was  proposed  in  other  States.  General  Schuyler,  thinking 
this  would  be  an  outrage,  impolitic,  inhuman,  and  iniqui- 
tous, memorialized  Congress  against  the  design.  Wash- 
ington heartily  accorded  with  Schuyler,  and  stood  success- 
fully for  condoning  the  offence  of  the  Indians,  waiving  the 
right  to  drive  them  over  the  Lakes  with  those  whose  allies 
they  had  been,  and  allowing  them  to  remain,  thinking  by  a 
conciliatory  course  to  get  from  them  cessions  of  lands  as 
they  should  be  needed  for  settlement. 

But  then  arose  another  difficulty  still  consequent  on  the 
entail  of  trouble  which  Britain  had  left  for  us.  In  the 
treaty  at  Fort  Stanwix,  in  1784,  the  savages,  observing 
what  power  the  Americans  derived  from  their  federation 
as  one  people,  began  then  and  thenceforward  to  feel  that 
they  too  would  be  strong  if  they  acted  in  concert.  Some 
of  the  chiefs  of  the  Six  Nations  at  Fort  Stanwix  objected  to 
making  a  separate  agreement  with  the  United  States  about 
land,  and  proposed  a  general,  comprehensive  disposal  of 
the  matter  of  boundaries  with  all  the  native  tribes.  But 
the  Commissioners  of  the  United  States  secured  a  separate 
bargain,  as  alone  then  possible,  leaving  open  matter  for 
later  animosities.  As  a  matter  of  course,  England  was  on 
the  ground  when  the  conspiracy  of  Tecumseh  at  the  South 
and  West,  in  full  vigor  before  the  war  of  1812,  gave  her 
another  opportunity,  alike  from  Canada  and  the  Gulf,  to 
renew  her  alliances  with  the  savages,  and  to  ply  and  pay 
and  arm  them  against  us. 


508  GREAT   BRITAIN    AND   THE   INDIANS. 

The  great  Mohawk  chief,  Joseph  Brant — Thajandanegea 
—  went  to  England,  in  1785,  to  obtain  compensation  for 
the  losses  of  his  people.  There  are  intimations  that  he  con- 
ferred with  crown  officers  on  a  plan  of  his  own  for  confed- 
erating the  Western  Indian  tribes  —  as  Pontiac  had  done 
twenty  years  before  —  whether  for  war  or  peace.  He 
sounded  the  Government  of  Britain  as  to  help  in  that  de- 
sign, and  obtained  the  promise  of  it.  England  justified  her 
delay  in  yielding  up  the  Western  posts,  —  Niagara,  Detroit, 
etc.,  —  on  the  plea  that  we  had  not  secured,  as  agreed,  com- 
pensation to  unarmed  Loyalists  for  losses  during  the  war. 
Our  Congress  had  agreed  to  ask,  not  to  secure,  this  com- 
pensation, for  it  could  not  coerce  the  separate  States  which 
alone  held  the  purse-strings.  So  the  Indians,  counte- 
nanced and  aided  by  the  English,  kept  up  hostilities  at 
the  West.  They  maintained  that  the  Ohio  must  be  the 
boundary,  and  that  we  should  not  cross  it.  They  protested 
against  separate  treaties  with  separate  tribes  by  which 
their  lands  were  alienated  by  piece-meal.  This  was  at  a 
council  held  at  Huron,  a  village  near  Detroit.  Our  "  Thir- 
teen Council  Fires"  made  the  chiefs  long  for  an  imitation 
in  a  confederacy  of  their  own.  So  a  temporary  result  of 
a  conference  with  them  was  attested  by  the  emblems, 
symbols,  or  totems  of  several  nations,  not  as  formerly  by 
the  names  of  chiefs.  A  proposed  general  Indian  council 
in  1788  was  a  failure.  But  a  somewhat  successful  treaty 
at  Fort  Harmar  in  January,  1789,  broke  or  deferred  the 
Indian  confederacy. 

Our  Government  authorities  knew  all  the  while,  that,  in 
all  the  vexations,  embarrassments,  and  opposition  in  their 
first  attempted  pacifying  and  covenanting  with  the  wild 
tribes,  English  officials,  when  not  openly,  were  always 
secretly  plying  the  Indians  mischievously  with  encourage- 
ment and  aid.  This  was  understood  to  be  one  of  the  re- 
maining grudges  of  the  war.  It  was  the  policy  of  our 
Government  to  divide  the  tribes  by  jealousies  of  each 


AN   ENGLISHMAN   AT   VANCOUVER.  509 

other,  and  to  secure  separate  treaties  with  them.  If  the 
English  can  magnanimously  claim  that  in  pure  love  for 
the  Indians  they  aimed  to  thwart  this  disintegrating  art 
and  cunning  of  ours,  we  might  compliment  them  as  for  a 
commendable  purpose.  It  is  none  the  less  true  that  when 
we  are  now  in  trouble  with  some  of  our  Indians,  they  are 
well  aware  that  they  will  find  aid,  comfort,  and  supplies 
across  the  border.  By  Jay's  treaty  the  British  on  our 
.border,  where  they  retained  the  posts,  were  allowed  to 
trade  with  the  Indians,  but  were  to  pay  duties  on  goods. 
This  the  British  evaded.  They  gave  medals  of  their  sov- 
ereigns to  the  chiefs,  and  put  up  English  flags  at  fortified 
posts  not  belonging  to  them.  So  late  as  1805,  Lieutenant 
Pike,  sent  by  our  Government  on  an  expedition  to  the 
sources  of  the  Mississippi,  made  complaint  to  an  agent  of 
the  English  Northwest  Company  of  the  grievances  which 
we  were  suffering  from  the  mischievous  and  illegal  deal- 
ings of  our  neighbors,  in  spite  of  all  agreements  and  pro- 
visions for  our  security. 

I  refer  to  this  series  of  annoyances,  grave  or  petty,  not 
for  the  purpose  of  criminating  the  English,  or  as  charging 
upon  them  the  whole  burden  of  very  much  of  the  incidental 
hostility  into  which  we  have  been  driven  with  our  Western 
Indians.  My  statements  are  addressed  merely  to  the  quali- 
fication of  the  claim  that  the  British  have  been  more  just 
and  more  pacific  in  the  treatment  of  the  savages  than  has 
our  Government  or  its  people.  The  circumstances  of  the 
respective  parties  have  been  quite  unlike,  and  the  occasions 
of  animosity  with  the  Indians  have  often  been  wholly  pecu- 
liar to  ourselves.  If,  therefore,  British  policy  has  availed 
for  keeping  its  own  territory  or  people  quiet  at  our  expense, 
that  policy  —  whatever  else  it  may  have  been  —  has  hardly 
been  a  magnanimous  one. 

A  suggestive  illustration  of  the  alleged  kindly  course 
pursued  by  an  official  Englishman  towards  the  natives  is 
given  in  "  Scenes  and  Studies  of  Savage  Life,  by  Gilbert 
Malcolm  Sproat "  (London,  1868).  He  writes  :  — 


510  GREAT   BRITAIN    AND    THE   INDIANS. 

"In  August,  1860,  I  entered  Barclay  Sound,  on  the  western 
coast  of  Vancouver  Island,  with  two  armed  vessels,  manned  by 
about  fifty  men,  for  the  purpose  of  taking  possession  of  the  district 
now  called  Alberni.  Near  the  beach  was  a  summer  encampment 
of  a  tribe  of  natives.  In  the  morning  I  sent  a  boat  for  the  chief, 
and  explained  to  him  that  his  tribe  must  move  their  encampment, 
as  we  had  bought  all  the  surrounding  land  from  the  Queen  of  Eng- 
land, and  wished  to  occupy  the  site  of  the  village  for  a  particular 
purpose.  He  replied  that  the  land  belonged  to  themselves,  but 
that  they  were  willing  to  sell  it.  The  price  not  being  excessive,  I- 
paid  him  what  was  asked,  —  about  £20  worth  of  goods,  —  for  the 
sake  of  peace,  on  condition  that  the  whole  people  and  buildings 
should  be  removed  next  day." 

The  savages  —  being  ten  to  one  of  the  English,  with  their 
faces  blackened  —  made  resistance,  with  bold  threats,  but 
concluded  to  move  off  when  their  attention  was  called  to 
the  cannon  on  the  vessels.  Sproat  visited  and  saluted  them 
in  their  new  resting-place,  and  the  chief  said  to  him :  — 

"  Our  families  are  well,  our  people  have  plenty  of  food ;  but 
how  long  this  will  last  we  know  not.  We  see  your  ships,  and  hear 
things  that  make  our  hearts  grow  faint.  They  say  that  more  King 
George  men  will  soon  be  here,  and  will  take  our  land,  our  fire- 
wood, our  fishing-grounds ;  that  we  shall  be  placed  on  a  little  spot, 
and  shall  have  to  do  everything  according  to  the  fancies  of  the 
King  George  men."  Sproat  replied  that  more  King  George  men 
were  coming,  but  that  the  land  would  be  bought  at  a  fair  price. 
The  chief  rejoined,  "We  do  not  wish  to  sell  our  land,  nor  our 
water :  let  your  friends  stay  in  their  own  country."  Sproat  said  : 
"  My  great  chief  (Victoria),  the  high  chief  of  the  King  George 
men,  seeing  that  you  do  not  work  your  land,  orders  that  you  shall 
sell  it.  It  is  of  no  use  to  you.  The  trees  you  do  not  need  ;  you 
will  fish  and  hunt  as  you  do  now,  and  collect  firewood,  planks  for 
your  houses,  and  cedar  for  your  canoes.  The  white  man  will  give 
you  work,  and  buy  your  fish  and  oil."  —  "But  we  don't  care  to  do 
as  the  white  man  wishes,"  said  the  chief.  "  Whether  or  not," 
replied  Sproat,  "  the  white  man  will  come.  All  your  people  know 
that  the  whites  are  your  superiors.  They  make  the  things  which 
you  value.  You  cannot  make  muskets,  blankets,  or  bread.  The 


CANADIAN   INDIAN   COMMISSION.  511 

white  men  will  teach  your  children  to  read  printing  and  to  be 
like  themselves."  The  chief  plainly  avowed  :  "  We  do  not  want 
the  white  man ;  he  steals  what  we  have.  We  wish  to  live  as 
we  are." 

Mr.  Sproat  proceeds  to  argue  that  he  had  made  a  bona 
fide  purchase  of  the  land  from  his  own  Government,  and 
again  from  the  natives  ;  that  his  occupation  of  it  was  justi- 
fiable in  nature  and  in  morals ;  that  the  natives  had  only 
partial  and  imperfect  rights,  as  they  did  not  occupy  the 
land  in  any  civilized  sense,  and  that  the  right  of  actual 
colonization  surpassed  theirs  and  annulled  it.  He  goes 
further,  and  urges  that  Britain  even  had  a  right  to  conquer 
a  peopled  and  cultivated  country  like  Oude,  in  India,  as  it 
was  a  delinquent  state  and  endangered  neighboring  English 
territories.  Sproat  says  that  during  the  five  years  of  his 
residence  the  Indians  deteriorated,  and  sickness  and  mor- 
tality increased,  —  not  from  rum  or  syphilis,  but  that  the 
Indians  seemed  cowed,  dispirited,  discouraged,  by  the  pres- 
ence of  a  superior  race.  Nobody  harmed  them  ;  they  had 
more  comforts  ;  yet  they  decayed :  savagism  wasted  them. 

Nor  have  the  British  authorities,  when  it  suited  their 
ends  to  purchase  land  of  the  Indians,  been  any  less  covet- 
ous or  any  more  generous  in  their  business  transactions 
than  has  our  own  Government.  The  Indians  of  Canada 
have,  at  different  times,  surrendered  over  sixteen  millions 
of  acres  of  land  at  prices  from  threepence  down  to  less 
than  a  penny  an  acre.  The  treaty  of  1850  surrendered  to 
the  Canadian  Government  a  territory  as  large  in  area  as 
Britain,  —  rich  in  minerals,  fisheries,  and  forests,  with  less 
than  three  thousand  Indians  upon  it,  —  for  the  sum  paid 
down  of  $16,640  and  a  perpetual  annuity  of  $4,400. 

I  have  before  me,  as  I  write,  two  substantial  volumes, 
bearing,  respectively,  the  following  titles  :  "  Annual  Report 
of  the  Commissioner  of  Indian  Affairs,  to  the  Secretary  of 
the  Interior,  for  the  Year  1881,"  Washington ;  and  "  Do- 
minion of  Canada  Annual  Report  of  the  Department  of 


512  GREAT   BRITAIN   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Indian  Affairs  for  the  Year  ending  31st  December,  1881, 
printed  by  Order  of  Parliament,"  Ottawa.  These  volumes 
are  almost  identical  in  the  nature  and  substance  of  their 
contents.  Indeed,  the  reader  might  turn  from  the  one  to 
the  other  in  perusing  their  pages,  and  be  unable,  except 
from  the  names  of  places  in  the  heading  of  letters  and 
documents,  to  decide  from  which  of  them  he  was  receiving 
information.  As  all  the  lands  within  our  boundary-lines 
are  called  our  "  domain,"  so  those  of  the  Dominion  are 
called  "  crown  lands."  Precisely  the  same  system  of  reser- 
vations,—  with  agents,  superintendents,  schools,  teachers, 
resident  farmers,  etc.,  —  with  reports  from  each  of  the  con- 
dition and  prospects  of  their  respective  charges,  with  similar 
qualifications,  difficulties,  hopes  of  improvements,  special 
embarrassments,  are  found  in  each  volume.  Supplies, 
helps,  facilities,  and  inducements  for  the  adoption  of  civil- 
ized ways  are  noted  on  both  sides  of  the  border.  "  Im- 
provident Indians  "  appear  in  both  regions.  Some  of  the 
Canada  agents  complain  that  their  red  wards  kill  and  eat 
the  cattle  sent  to  them  for  breeding,  and  consume  the  seed 
given  to  them  for  planting.  "Some  of  these  poor  creatures 
were  discovered,  after  having  planted  the  potato  seed  under 
the  instructor's  eye,  to  have  returned,  unearthed  what  they 
had  sown,  and  eaten  it"  (p.  xvii).  Another  agent  writes, 
"  I  never  was  so  sick  of  the  work  as  I  have  been  the  last 
two  days :  do  what  you  can  for  the  Indian,  he  cannot  be 
satisfied  "  (p.  xxxi).  Many  of  the  agents  write  of  the  im- 
portunity of  some  of  the  Indians  to  have  deeds  on  paper 
of  personal,  private  land-ownership.  They  receive  only  in 
special  cases  "  location  tickets,"  conditioned  on  fixtures  and 
improvements.  Glass  for  windows,  locks  and  other  finish- 
ings, are  given  by  Government  when  decent  houses  are 
built.  The  complaint  always  is  that  the  Indians  are  most 
troublesome  when  in  proximity  to  white  settlements.  The 
largest  congregated  band  of  savages,  partially  civilized,  in 
any  one  place,  seems  to  be  those  who  represent  the  old  Six 


CANADIAN   INDIAN   COMMISSION.  513 

Nations  in  Ontario,  numbering  three  thousand  four  hun- 
dred and  thirty.  Sir  John  A.  Macdonald,  Minister  of  the 
Interior  of  the  Dominion,  in  his  last  report  to  the  Mar- 
quis of  Lome,  the  Governor-General,  sounds  the  note  of 
warning  intimated  on  a  former  page,  when  the  Canadians, 
by  the  progress  of  their  Pacific  Railway,  will  be  brought 
into  relations  with  the  savages  more  like  those  which 
our  own  Government  and  people  have  encountered.  He 
writes  :  — 

"  It  will  be  necessary,  at  an  early  day,  to  give  serious  considera- 
tion to  the  many  circumstances  which  indicate  that  erelong  a  larger 
force  of  police  would  be  required  to  preserve  law  and  order  in  the 
Northwest.  Altercations  between  white  men  and  Indians  are  be- 
coming more  frequent,  and  the  influx  of  settlers  consequent  upon 
the  rapid  construction  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Eailway  will  de- 
mand additional  precautions  for  the  maintenance  of  peace  and  order 
in  the  territories  and  friendly  relations  between  the  white  and  the 
red  man."  l 

We  suppose  these  "  Northwest  mounted  police "  are 
armed ;  but  they  are  not  called  soldiers.  The  "  Census 
Return  of  Resident  and  Nomadic  Indians  in  the  Dominion 
of  Canada"  presents  a  total  of  107,722.  The  number  of 
acres  of  "Indian  lands"  sold  in  the  year  ending  June, 
1881,  to  new  settlers,  was  33,293,  at  the  price  of  152,787. 
The  area  of  such  lands  unsold  is  estimated  at  539,433 
acres.  The  number  of  Indians  on  the  reserves,  when 
counted  in  the  Northwest  Territories,  was  11,459 ;  the 
number  of  "  absentees "  from  reserves  was  11,577. 

1  Annual  Keport  of  the  Department  of  the  Interior,  for  the  Year  ended 
30th  June,  1881.  Ottawa. 


33 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  UNITED   STATES  GOVEKNMENT  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

ON  the  establishment  of  the  National  Government,  the 
Indians  became  at  once  the  objects  of  anxious  concern  and 
of  provisional  legislation.  Then  began  the  long  series  of 
schemes  and  measures,  of  tentative  devices  and  processes, 
of  immediate  and  prospective  arrangements,  and  of  efforts 
and  enterprises,  alternating  between  humane  and  peaceful 
and  severe  and  military  operations,  which  the  ever-changing 
elements  and  aspects  of  the  problem  have  presented  to  our 
statesmen  and  citizens.  The  Constitution  recognized  and 
confirmed  all  the  treaties  made  with  the  Indians  under  the 
Confederation  as  the  supreme  law  of  the  land ;  and  gave  to 
Congress  the  regulation  of  trade  with  them,  and  to  the  Ex- 
ecutive and  Senate  the  power  to  make  future  treaties.  The 
several  States  were  to  have  the  management  and  control 
over  the  Indians  within  their  respective  bounds,  unless  Con- 
gress, in  the  exercise  of  its  superior  prerogative,  might  see 
cause  to  overrule  their  measures.  Of  course,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  trouble,  controversy,  and  direct  antagonism, 
from  the  very  first,  arose  from  the  constant  obtrusion  of 
questions  and  issues  of  a  distracting  character  starting 
from  a  conflict  between  the  claims  of  the  States  and  of 
Congress  when  their  purposes  clashed. 

In  opening  the  discussion  of  this  theme,  which  presents 
so  much  matter  for  variances  of  opinion  even  among  intel- 
ligent and  right-hearted  men,  and  also  for  critical  and 
censorious  judgment,  we  must  remind  ourselves  of  the 


CONGRESSIONAL  POLICY.  515 

embarrassments  and  perplexities  under  which  our  Govern- 
ment became  charged  with  its  responsibilities  to  the  natives. 
We  must  even  pause  for  a  moment  upon  that  word  "  govern- 
ment." The  confederation  of  the  colonies  was  not  a  govern- 
ment ;  and,  so  far  as  any  of  its  measures  in  dealing  with 
the  Indians  implied  or  required  the  possession  or  exercise 
of  authority  to  give  them  effect,  this  prime  condition  failed. 
We  were  left,  at  the  acknowledgment  of  our  independence, 
in  a  state  of  exhaustion  and  poverty,  with  no  immediate  or 
effective  means  of  relief.  Our  British  enemies  had  subjected 
us  to  a  terrific  Indian  warfare,  and,  so  far  from  pacifying 
our  red  allies  towards  us,  left  them  to  annoy  and  harass  us 
after  the  treaty  of  peace.  One  of  the  first  makeshifts  of 
our  initiatory  national  organization  for  replenishing  an  ex- 
hausted treasury,  was  by  following  up  pioneer  settlers,  who 
were  rushing  into  the  ceded  lands  of  the  Ohio  valley  and  of 
the  Northwest,  and  exacting  of  them  payment  for  grants. 
These  pioneers  raised  quarrels  with  the  Indians,  and  then 
called  upon  the  shadowy  Government  to  send  troops  to  their 
aid,  and  to  try  to  make  treaties  with  the  red  men.  Alto- 
gether the  situation  was  a  very  complicated  one,  not  prom- 
ising any  better  results  than  such  as  followed. 

The  first  Congress  committed  to  the  Secretary  of  War 
the  management  of  Indian  affairs  ;  and  General  Knox,  the 
first  of  these  officials,  recommended  the  anticipatory  pur- 
chase of  large  tracts  of  Western  lands  and  the  removal  of 
the  Indians  from  them  before  the  whites  would  be  ready  or 
desirous  of  occupancy.  Congress  also  voted  $20,000  to  de- 
fray the  expenses  of  negotiations  with  the  Indians.  But 
tribes  both  at  the  North  and  the  South  were  then  making 
trouble,  regardless  of  their  treaties.  Instigated  and  sup- 
plied with  arms  by  the  British  on  the  Northern  frontier, 
they  kept  up  a  steady  and  destructive  warfare.  In  our  war 
with  the  Creeks,  in  1793,  we  used  Indian  allies  against  In- 
dians. Our  treaties  with  England  and  Spain,  in  1794  and 
1795,  for  the  most  part  cut  the  natives  off  from  receiving 


516  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

foreign  aid,  and  left  them  for  a  time  wholly  to  us.  If  space 
permitted,  very  many  details  might  be  specified,  all  indi- 
cating aggravations  of  what  might  have  been  the  simple 
responsibility  of  our  Government  and  the  mode  of  exercis- 
ing it  towards  the  Indians,  had  it  presented  itself  wholly 
free  from  such  complications.  Even  then  the  responsibility 
would  have  been  a  very  exacting  one.  But  it  has  never 
since  been  wholly  freed  from  these  original  complications. 

There  is  a  widely  prevalent  opinion,  —  often  avowed  as  a 
confession,  an  admission,  or  a  complaint,  and  generally  ac- 
quiesced in, — that  our  Government,  as  a  government,  has 
been  unjust,  inhuman,  grasping,  relentless,  and  perfidious 
in  its  treatment  of  the  Indian  tribes  with  which  it  has  suc- 
cessively come  into  contact,  either  in  negotiations  or  in  hos- 
tilities. That  there  are  obvious  and  various  grounds  for 
this  opinion,  more  or  less  just,  cannot  be  denied.  How  far 
any  direct  charges,  founded  on  specified  instances  or  cases 
of  such  injustice  or  cruelty,  may  be  met  with  relief  or  palli- 
ation, would  involve  a  discussion  requiring  much  knowledge 
and  much  candor. 

Having  myself  shared  in  this  general  opinion  of  the  cul- 
pability, misconduct,  and  even  reckless  and  wantonly  inten- 
tional injustice  of  our  Government,  I  am  gratified  in  being 
able  to  avow  that  all  the  increased  knowledge  which  I  have 
sought  and  reached  on  a  most  complicated  and  perplexed 
subject  has  very  much  modified  the  first  impressions  with 
which  I  turned  to  its  full  examination.  Certainly  I  feel 
warranted  in  making  the  emphatic  assertion  that  there  is 
no  evidence  that  our  Government  is  justly  chargeable  at 
any  period  with  intentional  fraud  or  with  heedless  indiffer- 
ence to  its  responsibilities  in  this  matter. 

These  severe  reproaches  against  our  Government,  it  is  to 
be  considered,  are  made  to  cover  the  whole  century  of  its 
existence  and  administration,  and  are  said  to  be  as  just  and 
applicable  in  these  last  past  years  as  ever.  In  view  of  them, 
let  me  distinctly  affirm,  that,  having  myself  accepted  them 


CONDUCT  TOWARD  THE  NATIVES.  517 

previous  to  a  thorough  investigation  as  wholly  warranted,  I 
have  no  intention  whatever  of  entering  any  other  plea  for 
reducing  these  reproaches  than  such  as  is  furnished  by  a  fair 
statement  of  the  facts.  It  would  indeed  be  painful  and 
humiliating  to  be  compelled  to  admit,  that,  in  a  country  like 
this,  strewn  all  over  with  the  noble  institutions  of  philan- 
thropy, with  hospitals  for  every  ill  of  humanity,  sending 
out  funds  and  laborers  for  all  other  sorts  of  heathen,  reliev- 
ing local  disasters  by  flood,  fire,  famine,  and  pestilence  by 
the  joint  contributions  of  private  benevolence ;  a  country 
that  has  proved  the  asylum  of  the  needy  and  oppressed 
from  all  other  civilized  lands  ;  and,  more  than  all,  a  country 
which  hung  itself  in  sackcloth,  and  bore  every  form  of 
costly  sacrifice  to  rid  itself  of  slavery,  —  it  would,  I  say,  be 
hard  to  yield  the  avowal  that  we  had,  through  our  Govern- 
ment, combined — with  a  set  purpose  of  inhumanity,  cruelty, 
and  fraud  —  against  our  predecessors  on  the  soil.  Not  de- 
nying that  there  has  been  very  much  done  and  winked  at 
that  looks  like  this,  I  affirm  that  at  least  the  intention,  the 
purpose  charged  against  us  exceeds  the  range  of  truth. 

I  can  say  more  than  this ;  namely,  that  I  am  persuaded 
that  every  candid  person  who  will  acquaint  himself  to  any 
reasonable  extent  with  the  enormous  mass  of  our  national 
State  papers,  our  official  documents,  and  our  general  litera- 
ture on  this  whole  subject,  will  find  abundant  evidence  that 
our  Government,  from  the  first  and  always  up  to  to-day, 
as  well  as  the  great  mass  of  our  people,  have  had  the 
most  humane  feelings  and  the  most  generous  intents  and 
purposes  towards  the  Indians.  Mistakes,  vexations,  diffi- 
culties, and  complications  of  all  sorts  and  kinds,  either 
inherent  in  or  incident  to  the  practical  workings  of  the 
case,  or  arising  from  inconsistency  or  inconstancy  of 
means  and  method,  will  in  great  part  account  for  the 
failure  of  designed  right  and  good,  and  the  substitution 
of  what  has  been  wrong  and  calamitous.  We  may  justly 
use  terms  severe  and  condemnatory  in  word  and  tone,  to 


518  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

characterize  the  lack  of  wisdom,  of  calm,  methodical,  judi- 
cious administration  of  Indian  affairs  by  our  Government ; 
and  we  may  use  the  most  scorching  invectives  against 
many  of  the  agents  and  agencies  to  which  it  has  entrusted 
functions  most  outrageously  abused,  —  but  we  can  acquit 
our  Government  of  all  intentions  of  inhumanity. 

That  certainly  has  been  a  direful  work  which  has  been 
going  on  upon  this  continent  during  the  period  of  our  ex- 
istence as  a  nation.  A  very  dark  catalogue  of  narratives  — 
equally  perhaps  for  either  party  —  makes  up  the  history  of 
controversy  and  strife  between  the  civilized  and  the  barbar- 
ous races  here.  But  none  the  less  are  we  to  distinguish 
amid  the  elements  of  the  strife  those  which  are  to  be  re- 
ferred to  designed  injustice  and  those  which  were  incident 
to  the  inevitable  complications  of  the  problem.  Our  Gov- 
ernment started  under  three  most  embarrassing  and  mis- 
chievous difficulties  in  its  relations  with  the  Indians ;  for 
none  of  them  was  it  responsible,  but  each  and  all  of 
them  brought  upon  us  an  Indian  war. 

First,  the  sullen  and  grudging  spirit  in  which  Britain 
acknowledged  the  independence  of  her  colonies  led  her 
to  perpetuate  an  after  strife  and  irritation  against  us. 
She  retained  for  many  years  the  Western  posts  which  she 
had  covenanted  to  surrender;  she  left  her  impoverished 
Indian  allies  unpaid  on  our  hands,  while  nominally  making 
them  and  their  lands  over  to  us  as  a  part  of  our  conquest 
and  inheritance ;  and  she  continued  in  all  our  early  trou- 
bles to  ply  and  pay  and  arm  the  savages  against  us,  in 
our  frontier  troubles.  This  entailed  warfare  was  the  hard- 
est for  us  to  bear,  and  we  have  not  yet  closed  it. 

Second,  the  Indians  did  not  understand  that  they  them- 
selves were  included  in  the  close  of  warfare  and  in  the 
terms  of  our  peace  with  Great  Britain.  Dangerous  neigh- 
bors were  left  us  among  them  and  the  French  in  the 
Western  territory,  which  the  latter  still  retained.  Our 
.enemies  kept  up  an  open  communication  between  Canada 


DIFFICULTIES   AND   EMBAKRASSMENTS.  519 

and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  to  our  annoyance  and  grievous 
loss. 

Third,  the  Spaniards  on  the  South  and  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley  still  retained  dominion  over  large  reaches  of  soil, 
and  we  had  from  them  a  continuous  series  of  vexing  and 
disturbing  controversies,  with  battles  interspersed  running 
down  to  our  Mexican  War. 

These  facts  are  to  be  considered  because  they  prevented 
our  starting  freely  and  fairly  in  our  career,  as  regarded  our 
relations  with  the  aborigines,  responsible  only  for  our  own 
public  acts  and  measures.  By  what  is  called  the  Law  of 
Nations  —  though  it  can  hardly  be  by  the  law  of  Nature  — 
our  Government  might  claim,  that,  as  Great  Britain  asserted 
a  right  of  sovereignty  over  the  Indians  and  their  territory 
within  certain  bounds  on  this  continent,  we,  having  con- 
quered in  the  great  war  of  Independence,  acceded  to  that 
British  right,  and  so  that  the  Indians  became  our  subjects, 
and  their  land  ours. 

But  these  difficulties,  impairing  the  freedom  with  which 
we  might  have  started  in  our  career  as  an  independent 
people,  and  in  perfectly  unprejudiced  relations  with  the 
natives,  are  comparatively  of  trivial  importance,  when  we 
come  to  recognize  on  the  one  side  the  inherent  difficulties 
of  the  original  problem,  with  all  the  remarkable  develop- 
ment of  unforeseen,  incalculable,  and  marvellous  complica- 
tions which  have  gathered  around  it  for  a  century ;  and,  on 
the  other,  that  our  Government  started  in  its  dealing  with 
the  subject  without  any  well-considered  plan,  principle, 
policy,  or  even  theory:  so  that  its  course  has  been  one 
of  surprises,  of  hap-hazards,  of  temporary  makeshifts,  of 
adjustments  to  changing  circumstances,  of  pledges  given 
and  broken,  of  evasions  of  some  obligations  by  assuming 
others  more  burdensome,  and  indeed  of  those  unhappy 
faults  of  blundering  which,  though  they  are  said  to  be 
worse  than  crimes,  lack  the  quality  .of  intention.  Our 
Government  never  has  adopted  or  given  the  sanction  of 


520  THE  U.  S.  GOVEENMENT  AND  THE  INDIANS. 

law,  from  its  formation  to  this  day,  to  any  theory  as  to  the 
tenure  by  which  any  band  of  the  aborigines  held  territory 
here.  We  shall  soon  notice  how  vacillating,  inconstant, 
and  self-stultifying  has  been  the  course  of  our  Government 
from  the  lack  of  such  a  theory  held  and  consistently  fol- 
lowed. The  development  of  wealth  and  enterprise  on  our 
domain  has  been  such  in  its  rapidity  and  amazing  results, 
that  the  keenest  and  most  kindled  imagination  could  not 
have  brought  it  into  dreams  or  visions.  The  rushing  in  of 
millions  of  immigrants  from  foreign  lands,  year  by  year, 
with  increasing  volume  and  force  of  tide ;  the  steady  pres- 
sure of  restless  adventurers,  unsuccessful  and  discontented 
in  the  half-developed  centres  of  civilization,  to  seek  un- 
limited space  of  new  territory,  never  entered  into  the  cal- 
culations of  our  statesmen,  who  thought  that  we  should 
hear  no  more  of  Indians  if  we  could  once  get  them  to 
settle  on  the  other  side  of  the  Mississippi.  President 
Van  Buren  bore  the  epithet  of  "  slyness,"  but  he  certainly 
won  the  repute  of  sagacity.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt 
his  integrity  of  purpose  when,  in  1838,  he  sought  to  per- 
suade the  Choctaws,  Creeks,  and  Cherokees  to  move  to 
lands  in  Arkansas,  to  be  covenanted  to  them  in  exchange 
for  those  occupied  by  them  in  Georgia,  Alabama,  and  Mis- 
sissippi, and  assured  them  that  as  the  former  lands,  though 
admirably  suited  for  Indians,  would  be  of  no  use  to  white 
men,  they  would  never  again  be  disturbed.  The  title  of 
"  The  Great  American  Desert "  is  still  ringing  in  the  ears 
of  men  as  familiar  to  them  in  their  youth,  who  have  since 
seen  it  parted  into  flourishing  States  and  Territories,  fur- 
nishing millionnaires  with  fortunes  scraped  from  its  surface 
or  its  depths.  It  is  but  fair  to  admit  that  a  policy  of  gov- 
ernment, such  as  it  was,  adopted  without  any  prescience  of 
these  developments,  would  find  that  it  had  been  blundering, 
though  not  necessarily  mean  and  unjust  in  intent,  in  mak- 
ing, evading,  or  breaking  contracts  with  Indians.  And  in 
reference  to  a  large  and  grievous  class  of  wrongs  which 


CHANGING  CONDITIONS  OF  THE  PROBLEM.  521 

have  been  inflicted  upon  the  natives,  we  shall  have  occa- 
sion to  observe  that  they  are  to  be  charged  to  the  account 
of  what,  on  the  side  either  of  good  or  evil,  we  are  wont  to 
admit,  that  the  people  are  stronger  than  the  Government. 
Had  the  fact  been  the  reverse  of  this,  and  had  the  Govern- 
ment been  stronger  than  the  people,  the  sum  and  quality  of 
our  difficulties  might  have  been  different,  but  perhaps  not 
more  tolerable,  in  another  form.  These  considerations  are 
in  all  fairness  to  be  taken  into  account  when  we  examine, 
whether  cursorily  or  thoroughly,  the  often  humiliating  and 
often  discreditable  course  of  policy  which  the  United  States 
Government  has  pursued  with  the  Indians  as  a  people,  or 
with  particular  tribes  of  them. 

Neither  can  there  be  any  doubt  that  the  Indians  have  in 
many  ways,  as  a  race,  —  with  the  largest  comprehension  of 
their  tribes,  and  with  reference  to  the  amount  of  general 
good,  —  received  a  sum  of  benefits  from  our  Government 
and  its  people.  And  this  may  be  affirmed  without  the 
slightest  hiding  from  our  view  what  they  have  suffered 
from  us.  It  might  be  a  question  not  readily  disposed  of  if 
asked,  whether  there  would  have  been  any  less  actual  fight- 
ing, loss  of  life,  cruelty,  and  all  the  miseries  of  warfare  on 
this  continent  during  the  last  hundred  years,  if  the  whites 
had  had  no  part  in  the  strife.  There  never  has  been  a 
Quaker  or  peace  tribe  of  Indians  discovered  on  this  conti- 
nent. Fighting  among  themselves  appears  always  to  have 
been  a  chief  end  of  their  existence.  Probably  their  having 
found  a  common  enemy  in  the  whites  has  checked  in  some 
measure  their  habit  of  internecine  war.  War,  too,  with 
some  foe,  has  always  been,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  foremost 
and  engrossing  passion  of  Indians.  They  were  trained  for 
it ;  and  if  they  did  not  enjoy  it,  they  found  an  intense  stim- 
ulus and  satisfaction  in  its  practice.  Their  great  men  were 
their  warriors.  We  have  given  them  another  enemy,  but 
we  taught  them  no  new  lesson  of  blood. 

It  is  certain  that  the  mass  of  Indians  who  have  come  into 


522  THE    U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND    THE   INDIANS. 

contact  with  the  whites,  and  have  not  actually  been  killed 
by  them,  have  received  from  them  many  appreciable  addi- 
tions to  their  resources  and  comforts.  The  quantities  of 
goods,  of  useful  and  desirable  articles,  that  the  Indians 
have  been  most  greedy  to  receive,  which  have  been  carried 
into  their  country  and  distributed  among  them,  are  enor- 
mous. In  fact,  for  more  than  an  hundred  and  fifty  years 
the  Indians  have  come  to  be  more  and  more  dependent 
upon  clothing,  utensils,  and  food  furnished  by  the  white 
men.  Edged  tools,  the  axe,  the  knife,  the  hoe,  the  spade, 
cooking  utensils,  even  the  single  article  of  matches,  all  to 
be  used  in  peaceful  ways,  have  vastly  helped  to  the  comfort 
of  the  Indian.  As  the  game  has  diminished  in  many  vast 
regions  of  space,  the  Indians,  who  had  largely  depended 
upon  the  old  fur-trappers  and  traders,  have  come  to  be  sup- 
pliants to  the  generosity  of  our  Government.  Indeed,  our 
soldiers  now  have  to  meet  their  red  foes  armed  with  the 
very  best  weapons  and  ammunition  which  our  armories  and 
arsenals  can  supply.  I  have  made  an  approximate  esti- 
mate, from  a  wide  examination  of  Government  documents 
and  accounts,  of  the  outlay  of  money  and  supplies  from  the 
national  treasury  for  help  of  various  kinds  for  the  Indians. 
But  I  refrain  for  two  reasons  from  setting  down  the  gross 
sum  in  dollars  and  cents.  For,  first,  the  accounts  are  per- 
plexed by  interest  on  annuity  funds,  and  by  reconsideration 
of  some  sums  once  pledged,  as  well  by  various  special 
grants  on  emergencies.  And,  second,  it  being  understood 
that  large  portions  of  these  treasury  benefices  are  scattered 
by  waste  and  fraudulent  agents,  while  the  proximate  amount 
of  the  largesses  would  indicate  the  generosity  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, it  would  not  be  the  real  measure  of  the  good  se- 
cured to  the  Indians.  More  to  the  point  is  the  reminder 
that  all  this  outlay  in  money  and  goods  —  spent  for  the 
service  of  wild,  restless,  lazy  hordes,  roaming  over  immense 
extents  of  territory  which  they  claim  as  their  heritage,  but 
do  not  improve  —  is  drawn  by  taxation  from  the  thrift, 


PEACE   MEDALS   FOR   CHIEFS.  523 

hard  labor,  economy,  and  savings  of  an  industrious,  toiling 
population,  and  from  enterprises  of  commerce  and  manu- 
facture. Further  reference  to  these  economical  and  practi- 
cal matters  will  come  before  us  when  we  deal  with  the 
present  bearings  of  the  Indian  question. 

We  are  concerned  now  with  the  perplexities  and  embar- 
rassments which  have  from  the  first  thwarted  the  good 
intentions  of  our  Government  in  its  policy  of  dealing  with 
the  natives. 

It  had  been  the  custom  of  British  officers  and  commis- 
sioners in  our  colonial  times  to  give  to  Indian  chiefs  with 
whom  they  had  friendly  relations  medals,  often  of  silver, 
with  the  figure  of  the  reigning  British  sovereign,  and  vari- 
ous symbols  and  emblems  upon  them.  Our  Government 
found  it  wise  to  imitate  this  effective  appeal  to  the  vanity 
of  the  savage,  who  regarded  the  trinket  as  a  token  acknowl- 
edging a  sort  of  equality  between  him  and  his  brother  mon- 
arch across  the  sea,  only  we  had  no  royal  personage  here 
to  represent  sovereignty.  Our  President,  as  soon  as  we 
had  one,  had  to  serve  the  purpose.  Commissioners  had 
been  appointed  by  Congress  in  1786  to  gather  up  these 
medals  from  the  chiefs,  and  to  substitute  republican  for 
royal  devices.  The  first  of  our  medals  was  that  given  by 
Washington  to  the  famous  Chief  Red  Jacket,  on  his  visit 
to  Philadelphia  in  1792  on  a  peace  embassy.  It  was  a 
large,  well-wrought,  oval  plate  of  silver,  showing  on  the 
obverse  the  full-length  figure  of  Washington,  in  uniform, 
bare-headed,  extending  a  calumet  to  the  mouth  of  an  Ind- 
ian, who  smoked  it  as  he  stood  by  a  pine-tree,  at  the  root 
of  which  lay  a  tomahawk ;  on  the  background  was  a  scene 
of  husbandry,  with  a  man  ploughing;  on  the  reverse  of 
the  medal  were  the  arms  of  the  United  States.  Red 
Jacket  was  very  proud  of  this  medal ;  and  though  he  often 
pledged  it  for  whiskey,  it  escaped  the  melting-pot,  and  was 
recently  in  the  possession  of  the  well-known  General  E.  S. 
Parker,  an  educated  Seneca  Indian,  who  was  on  General 


524  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

Grant's  staff,  and  his  military  secretary  during  our  Civil 
War.  Our  Government  has  followed  up  this  policy  of 
providing  medals  to  be  struck  for  presentation  to  repre- 
sentative Indian  chiefs,  in  treaties,  and  on  their  visits  to 
Washington.  These  Government  or  Peace  medals  bear  on 
the  obverse  the  effigies  of  the  President  for  the  time  being. 
The  same  die  for  the  reverse  common  to  most  of  them  pre- 
sents the  hand  of  a  military  officer  and  of  an  Indian  chief 
clasped  in  amity.  All  our  presidents  have  shared  in  this 
peaceful  service  with  the  exception  of  Harrison,  whose  sin- 
gle month  of  office  may  have  precluded  him  from  the  honor. 
It  seems  strange,  however,  that  he  who,  with  Jackson,  was 
largely  helped  to  our  highest  office  through  fame  and  suc- 
cess as  an  Indian  fighter,  should  not  have  been  commem- 
orated in  silver  and  bronze  on  a  peace  medal. 

Another  part  of  the  policy  of  our  Government  in  dealing 
with  the  Indians,  steadily  continued  from  the  visit  of  Red 
Jacket  in  1792,  has  been  to  invite  and  conduct  to  the 
national  capital,  from  time  to  time,  chiefs  and  delegations 
of  various  Indian  tribes.  These  sons  of  the  forest  have 
been  guided  and  escorted  from  their  retreats,  through  our 
highways  and  watercourses,  with  the  tokens  of  advancing 
civilization  as  they  passed  on.  They  have  been  courteously 
and  hospitably  entertained  ;  and,  gazed  upon  with  staring 
curiosity  by  street  crowds,  they  have  been  formally  received, 
on  a  day  appointed,  by  the  "  Great  Father,"  at  the  White 
House.  They  appear  in  all  their  grotesque  finery  of  feath- 
ers and  paint,  with  a  strange  blending  of  wilderness  and 
civilized  garb,  expressing  no  wonder,  assuming  the  bearing 
of  sheiks  and  sultans,  and  showing  their  common  humanity 
most  in  their  greed  and  beggary.  They  are  allowed  to 
course  the  streets,  to  visit  public  buildings,  and  their  desire 
to  possess  the  goods  and  the  trinkets  which  they  see  in  the 
shops  is  -generally  gratified  on  the  plea  that  they  wish  to  have 
them  to  carry  home  to  their  squaws.  Their  return  freight 
puts  them  in  rivalry  with  the  satirized  "  Saratoga  trunks." 


VISITS   OP  CHIEFS  TO  WASHINGTON.  525 

The  object  of  these  visits  and  entertainments  is,  of 
course,  to  impress  the  savages  with  a  sense  of  the  resources 
of  civilization  and  of  the  power  of  our  Government.  The 
effect,  however,  has  often  been  thought  a  dubious  one. 
The  pride  and  taciturnity  of  the  savages  lead  them  to  sup- 
press what  may  be  their  real  feelings.  They  receive  and 
accept  everything  as  a  matter  of  course,  as  simply  due  to 
their  rank  and  antecedents.  Doubtless  they  are  more  be- 
wildered than  impressed.  Their  interpreters  are  the  most 
important  personages  of  the  escort,  and  probably  the  chan- 
nel through  which  speeches  and  replies  flow,  impregnates 
them  with  artificial  material.  It  is  suggestive  to  think 
how  much  of  misunderstanding  and  deception  may  have 
been  caused  alike  to  Government  and  to  Indians  by  unqual- 
ified or  untrustworthy  interpreters.  These  visits  of  the 
nobles  of  the  forest  have  been  reciprocated  by  return  visits 
of  Government  officials  to  the  savages  at  home,  on  errands 
to  which  we  are  soon  to  refer.  It  might  seem  strange  that 
a  whole  century  of  such  intercourse  has  accomplished  so 
little  towards  the  results  of  peaceful  and  friendly  relation 
which  it  has  been  designed  to  secure.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  prove  that  it  had  really  brought  about  any  direct  concili- 
ation or  assimilation  of  parties  or  their  interests.  The  more 
the  whites  see  of  real  Indians  the  less  attractive  is  the 
spectacle,  and  the  full-grown  Indian  always  prefers  his 
savagery  to  civilization. 

In  reviewing  the  whole  course  of  our  Government,  for 
a  now  nearly  completed  century,  in  its  dealings  with  pur 
native  tribes,  we  find  that  it  has  always  had  in  view  three 
leading  objects  or  designs,  which  have  from  the  first 
prompted  and  directed  its  action.  These  are :  — 

1.  To  keep  an  ever-shifting  frontier  space  between  the 
Indians  and  the  whites  ;  securing  this  by  moving  the  for- 
mer farther  and  farther  westward  as  the  latter  advanced 
on  new  territory  for  actual  settlement. 

2.  To  prevent  or  suppress  all  border  quarrels  and  con- 


526  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

flicts  as  they  threatened  or  broke  out;  the  measures  for 
effecting  this  interchanging  and  alternating,  as  circum- 
stances favored  or  decided,  between  peaceful  negotiations, 
presents,  bribes,  and  annuities,  and  a  resolute  use  of  mili- 
tary power. 

3.  To  improve,  reclaim  from  barbarism,  and  elevate  the 
natives,  and  to  make  them  fit  for  citizenship. 

There  is  no  inconsistency,  no  necessary  clashing,  be- 
tween these  objects.  On  the  contrary,  they  seem  and  really 
are  harmonious ;  mutually  helpful  parts  of  a  hopeful  and 
promising  plan  for  serving  the  interests  of  all  concerned, 
and  for  advancing  the  most  desirable  ends  of  humanity, 
civilization,  and  a  common  prosperity. 

But  none  the  less  have  practical  and  very  serious  diffi- 
culties and  perplexities,  and  some  very  lamentable  mis- 
takes and  calamities,  been  encountered  by  the  Government 
in  its  purposes  and  efforts  to  secure  these  three  objects.  It 
was  requisite  for  success  that  all  these  three  designs  and 
intents  should  have  been  kept  in  view  in  every  stage  of 
a  protracted  and  complicated  responsibility.  But  circum- 
stances, and,  as  we  may  say,  emergencies  and  surprises, 
have  from  time  to  time  induced  the  Government  to  lay  the 
whole  stress  of  its  interest  and  activity  upon  a  single  one 
of  those  objects,  to  the  neglect  or  the  sacrifice  of  the  others. 
Hence  has  come  inconstancy  of  purpose,  change  of  policy, 
vacillation  of  aim,  reconsideration  of  measures,  and  what 
has  in  fact  amounted  to  a  thwarting  and  undoing  of  its 
own  plans  and  work.  At  one  time  the  rapid  removal  of 
the  Indians  has  been  the  chief  end  in  view,  and  measures 
to  effect  it  have  engrossed  attention.  Then,  in  frequent 
alternations  of  debate  and  congressional  action,  reliance  has 
been  placed  now  on  a  peace  policy,  which,  being  pronounced 
by  military  men  and  frontier  settlers  a  proved  failure,  next 
yields  to  a  stern  recourse  to  arms.  And,  to  crown  the 
confusion  of  the  matter,  there  are  many  who  claim  it  to  be 
a  certified  fact  that  the  Indians  cannot  be  civilized. 


WISE  AND  HELPFUL  MEASURES.          527 

It  is  but  fair  to  allow  and  assert  that  our  Government 
has  from  the  first  given  at  least  equal  heed  and  care  for 
humane  as  for  hostile  dealings  with  the  Indians.  Congress 
in  1793  provided  securities  against  impositions  practised 
upon  the  Indians  by  individuals  in  bargaining  for  their 
lands,  and  forbade  all  private  contracts  of  this  sort.  It 
also  sought  to  protect  the  Indians  from  all  outrages  by  the 
whites,  and  to  give  them  the  protection  of  the  civil  law. 
Washington  was  authorized  to  send  among  some  tribes 
cattle,  farm  implements,  teachers,  and  the  means  of  civili- 
zation. The  whole  series  of  treaties  had  incidentally  or 
emphatically  in  view  the  securing  to  the  Indians  the  peace- 
ful and  inalienable  possession  of  their  lands,  and  the  help- 
ing them  through  annuities  and  the  influence  of  education 
and  practical  instruction  in  agriculture,  the  inclosing  of 
grounds,  and  the  building  of  houses,  mills,  schools,  and 
churches,  to  adopt  civilized  habits.  Yet  the  law  of  1796 
which  excluded  all  the  whites  from  Indian  territories  was 
said  to  be  prejudicial  and  mischievous,  as,  while  it  kept 
out  order-loving  and  well -disposed  whites,  whose  presence 
among  them  would  have  been  of  great  benefit  to  the  Ind- 
ians, it  failed  to  restrain  the  intrusion  of  the  worst  class 
of  lawless  and  reckless  adventurers.  An  Act  of  the  same 
year  authorized  Washington  to  establish  a  system  of  trade, 
through  stations,  goods,  and  agents  among  the  Indians,  the 
Government  furnishing  the  capital  and  managing  the  busi- 
ness through  its  employe's.  This  proved  to  be  a  most 
losing  experiment,  year  by  year  more  impracticable  and 
costly ;  but  it  was  continued  under  trial  till  1822,  when  it 
was  abandoned. 

Up  to  Jefferson's  administration,  the  nation  congratu- 
lated itself  that  the  peace  policy  had  greatly  advanced  the 
Indians,  those  of  them  especially  who  came  nearest  in  prox- 
imity to  the  whites.  The  President  himself  expressed  that 
opinion.  But,  strangely  enough,  he  himself  proposed,  as  a 
change  of  plans,  the  removal  of  the  Indians  as  a  body  as 


528  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

far  as  possible  from  the  whites,  across  the  Mississippi.  Yet 
in  his  own  purpose  this  measure,  though  it  seemed  to  be 
made  advisable  because  of  the  irrepressible  encroachments 
of  the  whites,  was  honorably  proposed  in  the  interest  of  the 
natives.  The  fact  that  the  Indians  have  been  so  often 
moved  in  bodies  has  confirmed  the  popular  assumption  that 
no  real  permanent  tenure  of  land  was  secured  by  mere 
roamers,  who  in  leaving  one  tract  for  another  left  nothing 
behind  them  of  property  or  improvement.  General  Wash- 
ington in  all  his  messages  or  speeches  addressed  to  Con- 
gress, with  an  ever-wise  regard  for  equity  and  humanity  in 
all  things,  as  the  necessary  pledge  of  all  prosperity  and  se- 
curity, made  emphatic  references  to  the  kind  treatment  due 
to  the  Indians.  He  proposed  and  recommended  successive 
measure's  in  their  behalf,  as  experience  and  reflection  sug- 
gested them  to  his  own  mind.  The  following  sentence  is 
characteristic  in  tone  and  spirit  of  all  his  communications. 
It  occurs  in  his  speech  to  the  second  Congress,  in  1791 : 

"  A  system  corresponding  with  the  mild  principles  of  religion  and 
philanthropy  towards  an  unenlightened  race  of  men,  whose  happi- 
ness materially  depends  on  the  conduct  of  the  United  States,  would 
be  as  honorable  to  the  national  character  as  conformable  to  the 
dictates  of  sound  policy." 

Many  sentences  of  similar  tenor  and  tone  might  be  quo- 
ted from  the  communications  of  his  successors  in  office. 
No  one  would  have  the  hardihood  to  affirm  that  they  were 
insincere.  And  if  the  high  magistrates  who  uttered  these 
sentiments  were  compelled  under  the  stress  of  circum- 
stances to  permit  measures  directly  inconsistent  witli 
them,  something  is  to  be  allowed  to  the  intractability  of 
the  Indians. 

Alexander  Hamilton,  from  his  first  participation  in  the 
direction  of  the  public  affairs  of  our  nation,  always  held 
and  advanced  wise  and  humane  views  in  regard  to  the  Ind- 
iana. He  wrote :  — 


TECUMSEH'S  CONFEDERACY.         529 

"  Their  friendship  alone  can  keep  our  frontiers  in  peace.  It  is 
essential  to  the  development  of  our  fur-trade,  —  an  object  of  immense 
importance.  The  attempt  at  the  expulsion  of  so  desultory  a  people 
is  as  chimerical  as  it  would  be  pernicious.  War  with  them  is  as 
expensive  as  it  is  destructive.  It  has  not  a  single  object,  for  the 
acquisition  of  their  lands  is  not  to  be  wished  till  those  now  vacant 
are  filled ;  and  the  surest  as  well  as  the  most  just  and  humane  way 
of  removing  them  is  by  extending  our  settlements  to  their  neigh- 
borhood. Indeed,  it  is  not  impossible  that  they  may  be  already 
willing  to  exchange  their  former  possessions  for  more  remote 


Accordingly,  as  chairman  of  a  committee  in  1783,  he  re- 
ported that  "  the  general  superintendence  of  Indian  affairs 
under  Congress  be  annexed  to  the  Department  of  War," 
that  "  offensive  hostilities  "  be  suspended,  and  that  four  dis- 
tricts—  by  the  points  of  the  compass  —  be  established  in 
the  United  States,  with  an  agent  for  each,  to  transact 
Indian  affairs.  The  plan  was  not  adopted,  because  the 
Governors  of  Territories  had  the  power  under  the  War 
Department. 

Tecumseh,  with  the  help  of  his  famous  brother,  the 
"  Prophet,"  essayed  to  repeat  the  experiment  made,  before 
he  was  born,  by  the  great  chief  Pontiac.  But  he  laid  even 
a  broader  basis  for  his  enterprise.  This  was  to  unite  the 
Western,  Southern,  and  Northern  tribes,  with  the  open 
sympathy  and  the  covert  aid  of  the  British  in  Canada,  to 
drive  the  whites  back  from  the  frontiers,  and  to  make  the 
Ohio  a  permanent  boundary  between  them  and  the  Indians. 
We  know  what  significance  Tecumseh  and  our  President 
Harrison  gave  to  the  word  "  Tippecanoe."  Tecumseh' s  en- 
terprise was  already  flagging  from  its  first  earnestness  and 
hopefulness,  when  the  opening  of  our  war  with  Britain,  in 
1812,  gave  it  a  formidable  aspect.  It  is  curious  to  note 
how  the  savages  had  learned  from  our  colonies  the  value 
and  strength  of  union  in  a  confederacy.  Tecumseh's  able 

Works,  i.  408. 
34 


530  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

spirit  seized  the  purpose  of  imitating  it  among  the  red  men. 
In  the  many  councils  and  conferences  between  Tecumseh 
and  his  associated  chieftains  and  General  Harrison,  the  for- 
est champion  took  and  resolutely  held  two  positions,  iden- 
tified, as  he  said,  with  the  rights  of  the  Indians :  First, 
Harrison  having  complained  of  him  for  trying  to  unite  the 
tribes  in  a  league,  Tecumseh  acknowledged  the  fact,  and 
maintained  his  right  to  do  so.  The  Indians  might  com- 
bine and  confederate  in  a  common  cause  as  justly  as  the 
white  men  had  done.  Harrison  was  the  agent  for  what  he 
called  "  the  Seventeen  Fires "  united  in  council,  —  the 
States  of  the  Union.  "Why  might  not  the  Indian  tribes 
unite  their  council  fires?"  asked  Tecumseh.  Again,  Har- 
rison insisted  on  the  fact  that  the  territory  in  dispute  had 
been  already  ceded  by  the  Miamis  to  the  United  States. 
Tecumseh  replied  that  a  few  Indian  tribes  had  no  right  to 
sell  lands  which  belonged  as  a  whole  to  the  whole  Indian 
race.  The  whole  land  being  the  common  inheritance  of 
the  aborigines,  the  Miamis  could  not  alienate  one  portion, 
the  Delawares  another,  and  so  on.  The  Great  Spirit,  he 
said,  had  given  the  whole  to  the  red  man,  and  put  the 
whites  on  the  other  side  of  the  big  water.  The  whites  had 
no  right  to  come  here  and  gradually  dispossess  the  Indian 
race  by  cozening  grants  of  land  from  single  tribes.  Gene- 
ral Harrison  stood  stoutly  in  his  answer  against  Tecumseh's 
plea.  He  denied  that  the  Indians  ever  were  or  could  be 
regarded  as  one  nation.  He  urged  that  the  land  in  dispute 
had  been  purchased  from  the  Miamis,  who  had  long  pos- 
sessed it,  and  that  the  Shawnees,  whom  Tecumseh  repre- 
sented, were  intruders  from  Georgia,  whence  they  had  been 
driven  by  the  Creeks,  and  that  they  had  no  right  to  in- 
terfere with  the  Miamis  in  the  disposition  of  their  own 
territory.  Here  we  have,  put  into  a  practical  form,  the 
fundamental  question  as  to  the  tenure  of  Indian  tribes  in 
unimproved  regions,  free  to  be  coursed  over.  Tecumseh's 
grievance  was  that  in  Jefferson's  administration  the  favor- 


THE  MASSACRE  AT  FORT  MIMS.  531 

ite  hunting-grounds  on  the  Wabash  had  been  ceded  by  the 
Miamis  to  our  Government.  He  maintained  that  no  single 
tribe  had  absolute  ownership  of  any  space,  and  that  the 
chiefs  of  a  tribe  had  no  prerogative  of  acting  for  the  whole 
tribe  in  alienating  land.  Harrison  defended  Fort  Meigs 
in  two  hard-pressed  sieges.  It  has  been  affirmed  that  but 
for  Tecumseh  our  war  with  Britain  then  might  have  left 
us  in  possession  of  Canada.  But  it  was  wise  that  our  Gov- 
ernment did  not  at  that  time  involve  itself  in  any  further 
complications  as  to  territory.  It  is  observable,  however, 
that  each  successive  contest  with  the  aborigines  which 
brought  under  question  their  land-tenure,  never  induced  or 
forced  our  Government  to  adopt  a  definition  in  terms  as  to 
what  precisely  that  right  was,  —  a  definition  to  be  estab- 
lished as  a  precedent,  and  to  be  recognized  under  shifting 
circumstances  in  its  application,  whether  in  any  particular 
case  it  favored  the  whites  or  the  Indians. 

The  fearful  massacre  at  Fort  Minis,  in  Alabama,  then  a 
part  of  the  Mississippi  Territory,  Aug.  30, 1813,  threw  the 
whole  South  into  a  panic.  There  were  then  twenty  stock- 
ade forts  within  a  stretch  of  seventy  miles.  The  scattered 
settlers  rushed  into  these  slender  defences.  There  were 
five  hundred  and  fifty-three  whites,  with  their  friends,  in 
Fort  Minis;  and  of  these,  four  hundred  were  butchered. 
The  Indians  were  aided  by  the  Spaniards  in  Florida.  The 
Creeks  were  then  in  our  pay.  The  more  stoutly  and  cour- 
ageously, and  for  the  time  successfully,  the  Indians  fought 
to  keep  their  hold  upon  any  region  of  territory,  the  more 
clearly  did  our  people  think  themselves  justified  in  contest- 
ing it.  Savage  warfare  employed  such  arts  and  barbarities 
as  to-  certify  the  right  and  obligation  of  civilization  to  bring 
it  to  a  close.  If  wild  occupancy  of  land  did  not  secure  a 
tenure,  still  less  did  the  peculiar  method  of  the  Indian  in 
fighting  for  it  confirm  any  natural  right  of  his  to  defend  it 
as  his  own.  Indeed  one  is  well-nigh  led  to  imagine  that 
if  the  Indians  had  from  the  first  never  raised  a  weapon 


532  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

against  the  whites,  but  had  tamely,  like  sheep,  moved  off  as 
they  were  approached,  they  would  have  shamed  Europeans 
into  yielding  through  magnanimity  what  the  overcoming 
of  resistance  has  led  them  to  claim  as  their  rights  over 
the  savages. 

President  J.  Q.  Adams,  in  his  message  of  1828,  states 
emphatically  what  had  been  the  theory  acted  upon  by  the 
Government  since  established  by  the  Constitution :  "  The 
principle  was  adopted  of  considering  the  Indians  as  foreign 
and  independent  powers,  and  also  as  proprietors  of  lands. 
As  independent  powers,  we  negotiated  with  them  by  trea- 
ties; as  proprietors,  we  purchased  of  them  all  the  land  which 
we  could  prevail  on  them  to  sell ;  as  brethren  of  the  human 
race,  rude  and  ignorant,  we  endeavored  to  bring  them  to 
the  knowledge  of  religion  and  of  letters." 

The  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court,  in  1832  (Worcester 
vs.  Georgia),  confirmed  this  view  as  to  the  treaty-making 
power  and  as  to  the  foreign  nationality  of  the  Indians. 
But  it  has  proved  of  no  avail,  either  as  holding  our  Govern- 
ment to  any  consistent  course  of  policy,  or  as  adding  to  the 
security  of  the  Indians  in  any  of  our  negotiations  with 
them.  Had  the  inquiry  at  any  time  been  fairly  pressed  by 
an  intelligent  Indian  upon  any  one  of  our  statesmen,  "  Do 
you  admit  that  my  tribe  owns  the  unbounded  region  over 
which  we  roam  and  hunt,  precisely  as  your  people  individu- 
ally'own  their  house-lots  arid  farms  ?"  the  answer,  if  candid 
and  manly,  would  need  to  have  been,  "  No  ;  I  do  not." 

The  following  passage  in  the  recently  published  diary  of 
John  Quincy  Adams,1  is  of  interest  here.  It  is  a  record  of 
a  Cabinet  meeting  under  his  Presidency,  Dec.  22, 1825, — 
the  business  relating  to  the  affairs  of  the  Creek  Indians 
and  Georgia :  — 

"Mr.  Clay  [Secretary  of  State]  said  that  it  was  impossible  to 
civilize  Indians  ;  that  there  never  was  a  full-blooded  Indian  who 
took  to  civilization.  It  was  not  in  their  nature.  He  believed 

1  Vol.  vii.  p.  90. 


OPINIONS   OF   OUR  STATESMEN.  533 

they  were  destined  to  extinction,  and,  although  he  would  never 
use  or  countenance  inhumanity  towards  them,  he  did  not  think 
them,  as  a  race,  worth  preserving.  He  considered  them  as  essen- 
tially inferior  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  which  were  now  taking 
their  place  on  this  continent.  They  were  not  an  improvable 
breed,  and  their  disappearance  from  the  human  family  will  be  no 
great  loss  to  the  world.  In  point  of  fact  they  were  rapidly  dis- 
appearing, and  he  did  not  believe  that  in  fifty  years  from  this 
time  there  would  be  any  of  them  left. 

"  Governor  Barbotir  was  somewhat  shocked  at  these  opinions,  for 
which  I  fear  there  is  too  much  foundation." 

More  than  the  fifty  years  which  Mr.  Clay  allowed  for  the 
disappearance  of  the  Indians  have  now  expired.  Still  there 
are  "  some  of  them  left."  But  the  experience  of  all  the 
intervening  years  in  our  dealings  with  them;  the  steady 
opposition  of  one  or  another  tribe  as  reached  by  the  succes- 
sive advances  of  civilization ;  the  discomfiture  and  failure 
of  such  efforts  as  have  been  made  in  their  behalf  through 
treaties,  agencies,  pensions,  and  missions;  the  opening  of 
new  hostilities  with  them  in  each  decade  of  time ;  the 
events  of  this  passing  year,  and,  it  may  be  added,  the  well- 
nigh  universal  opinion  founded  upon  these  facts,  —  authen- 
ticate the  concise  judgment  of  President  Adams  on  the 
frank  avowal  of  Mr.  Clay,  "  I  fear  there  is  too  much  foun- 
dation "  for  these  views. 

Our  national  archives,  Congressional  and  Departmental, 
our  religious  and  philanthropic  historical  documents,  will 
indeed,  as  before  stated,  furnish  overwhelming  evidence  of 
an  unbroken  series  of  efforts,  thoughtfully  and  humanely 
planned,  earnestly  endeavored,  patiently  pursued,  and  la- 
bored for  with  enormous  cost,  to  protect,  to  benefit,  and 
elevate  the  Indians.  With  no  considerable  exceptions  to 
the  sweep  of  the  sentence,  we  have  to  say  that  they  have 
all  been  thwarted.  There  are  those  who  feel  that  a  deep 
burden  of  reproach  rests  upon  our  nation  on  this  account. 
The  large  majority  of  our  people,  however,  have  always 


534  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

reconciled  themselves  to  this  sad  fortune  of  the  aborigines, 
as  of  destiny,  in  conformity  with  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Clay. 

If  it  be  urged  that  all  the  measures  taken  by  our  Govern- 
ment avowedly  for  the  protection  of  the  Indian  tribes  have  in- 
variably been  conditioned  upon  their  removal  from  coveted 
domains,  farther  into  the  West,  only  to  be  crowded  yet  back- 
ward when  their  reservations  are  reached,  —  the  answer 
will  be  a  prompt  one  in  these  days,  when  the  whole  his- 
tory of  evolved  life,  vegetable,  animal,  and  human,  on  this 
globe,  is  read  by  philosophy  as  "  a  survival  of  the  fittest." 
Mr.  Edward  Everett,  in  his  address  at  Deerfield,  commemo- 
rative of  the  massacre  at  "Bloody  Brook,"  boldly  vin- 
dicated the  course  of  the  white  man  towards  the  savages 
as  conformed  to  a  providential  design  and  sanction.  He 
urged  that  if  the  habitable  spaces  of  this  globe  are  to  be 
the  scenes  of  culture,  prosperity, 'thrift,  and  happiness  for 
communities  of  human  beings  in  fields  and  homes,  then  it 
was  right  that  the  savages  roaming  over  this  new  continent 
should  yield  it  to  the  needs  of  those  who  could  make  a 
better  use  of  it. 

To  all  pleas  as  to  the  enormous  and  complicated  per- 
plexities with  which  our  Government  has  had  to  deal,  from 
its  first  attempts  to  dispose  of  the  Indian  problem,  the  easy 
reply  is  offered,  that  the  problem  would  have  been  a  per- 
fectly simple  and  lucid  one,  if  it  had  been  left  to  the  solu- 
tion of  natural  justice  and  common  humanity.  And  as  a 
comment  on  this  reply  it  is  added,  that  abstractly  and  rhe- 
torically the  rights  and  claims  of  the  Indians  have  been 
recognized,  perhaps  often  in  excess  of  just  reason  and  ex- 
tent ;  but  that  when  they  have  stood  in  the  way  of  the 
advances  of  civilization,  or  have  conflicted  with  the  greed 
and  wishes  of  the  whites, — the  whites  being  the  sole  judges 
in  the  case, — then  the  recognized  rights  of  the  red  man 
have  turned  to  mere  mist. 

There  certainly  has  been  much  allowed  and  done  that 
has  this  aspect.  But  we  must  look  below  this  aspect.  In 


BAFFLED   STATESMANSHIP.  535 

conflict  with  my  own  former  impressions,  I  have  been 
brought  to  admit  that  the  intent  and  purpose  of  the  United 
States  have  always  been  to  recognize  the  supreme  obliga- 
tions of  humanity  towards  the  Indians,  to  protect  them, 
and  to  be  even  lavishly  generous  towards  them.  Efforts 
and  outlays  in  these  behalfs  are  testified  to  in  our  State 
papers  and  in  the  records  of  Congress.  Inquiries  and  in- 
vestigations, commissions,  councils,  invitations,  and  visits 
of  Indian  chiefs  and  warriors  to  Washington  and  other 
cities,  protracted  debates  in  Congress,  and  the  appropria- 
tion of  large  sums  of  money,  are  evidences  of  right  pur- 
poses ;  and  they  have  not  been  hypocritical.  Philanthropic 
and  religious  men  have  been  sent  with  large  gifts  at  the 
public  expense  to  give  a  continual  hearing  to  Indian  griev- 
ances, and  even  to  humor,  as  well  as  to  conciliate,  those 
who  exposed  them.  Tentative  and  experimental  schemes 
and  shifts,  ingenious  and  temporizing,  have  been  put  on 
trial.  And,  finally,  military  forces  have  been  sent  among 
the  Indians,  not  by  any  means  merely  to  kill  them,  but  also 
to  defend  them  from  each  other,  and  to  protect  them 
against  wrongs  from  the  white  man.  Yet  none  the  less, 
practically  and  in  effect,  all  these  wise  and  kind  intents 
and  efforts  have  been  thwarted,  and  we  have  to  allow  that 
the  Indians  have  received  from  us  treatment  outrageous, 
iniquitous,  and  perfidious. 

Still  we  have  to  say  that  the  inherent  difficulties  of  the 
problem  have  baffled  the  most  consummate  statesmanship. 
The  sagacity  and  grasp  of  mind  exercised  by  our  statesmen 
in  our  Constitution,  and  more  than  one  display  of  wisdom 
and  shrewdness  in  our  diplomacy,  have  won  the  encomiums 
of  the  civilized  world.  But  this  one  problem  —  how  to 
deal  rightly  and  wisely  with  our  joint  inheritors  of  terri- 
tory broad  enough  for  us  all  —  has  not  yielded  to  the  mas- 
tery of  our  statesmanship.  Are  the  difficulties  in  the  case 
inherent  and  insuperable ;  or  have  we  invented  and  inten- 
sified them  ourselves  ? 


536  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

The  course  of  our  Government,  for  the  full  hundred 
years,  in  its  dealings  with  the  Indians,  has  been  mis- 
chievously tentative,  experimental,  inconsistent,  and  waver- 
ing, —  adopting  now  one  theory  and  course  of  action,  and 
following  one  or  another  method  to  .secure  it ;  then  substi- 
tuting a  different  idea  or  aim ;  next  abandoning  them,  and 
reverting  to  its  former  view,  or  devising  a  third ;  and, 
finally,  confessing  itself  baffled,  as  if  it  knew  not  what 
might  wisely  and  rightly  be  aimed  for,  or  had  undertaken 
a  task  for  which  it  was  incompetent. 

It  is  no  longer  than  twelve  years  since,  in  1871,  that 
our  Government  recognized  the  fact  that  a  radical  and  fatal 
error,  fundamental  and  comprehensive  in  all  its  elements 
of  mistake  and  harm,  had  up  to  that  date  vitiated  all  its 
policy  towards  the  Indians.  It  is  yet  to  be  tested  whether 
the  terms  in  which  the  recognition  of  that  error  was  made, 
and  the  perpetuity  which  was  assured  by  those  terms  to 
some  of  the  troublesome  contracts  under  that  policy,  will 
avail  to  set  the  matter  in  the  right  way  for  the  future. 
An  Act  of  Congress  in  1871  forbade  the  recognition  any 
longer  of  Indian  tribes  or  nations  as  independent  powers 
in  the  sense  of  being  capable  of  forming  treaty  relations 
with  us ;  while  the  same  Act  did  not  invalidate,  but  con- 
firmed, the  lawfulness  and  force  of  all  existing  treaties. 
Now,  is  this  recent  legislation  to  be  taken  as  an  admission 
of  a  radical  error  in  the  action  of  our  Government  up  to 
that  year  in  having  regarded  the  Indians  as  independent 
powers  with  whom,  as  with  European  and  other  nations, 
we  might  make  treaties ;  or  as  simply  a  recognition  of  a 
change  in  the  status  of  the  Indians  which  had  been  brought 
about  by  time  and  circumstances  ?  Probably  we  may  refer 
the  enactment  for  its  grounds  and  reasons  to  both  of  these 
xplanations. 

The  Hon.  E.  S.  Parker,  before  referred  to,  himself  an 

dian  of  marked  abilities,  in  his  report  as  Commissioner 
o&Indian  Affairs,  in  1869,  addressed  to  the  Hon.  J.  D. 


INCONSTANT  POLICY.  537 

Cox,  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  advised  that  all  future  cove- 
nants and  arrangements  with  the  Indians,  about  their  res- 
ervations and  the  aid  to  be  furnished  them,  should  not  be 
of  the  nature  of  treaties  ;  as  a  treaty  involves  the  princi- 
ple of  a  compact  between  sovereign  powers,  each  having 
authority  and  force  to  compel  a  fulfilment  of  obligations. 
But  the  Indians  are  not  sovereignties  with  such  strongly 
organized  governments  as  to  be  able  to  enforce  covenants. 
They  have  been  led  by  these  treaty  dealings  with  them  as 
independent  nations  to  regard  themselves  as  such,  and  so 
to  believe  that  our  Government  has  recognized  them  as 
having  an  absolute  fee  in  the  lands  for  which  we  have 
treated  with  them  ;  whereas  the  Government  has  really 
regarded  them  as  wards  of  the  nation,  having  simply  a 
possessory  title  to  territory. 

These  sentences  expose  to  us  the  very  roots  of  the  error 
under  which  our  Indian  policy  has,  till  so  recently,  proceeded 
and  been  guided.  Never  until  now  —  if  even  now  —  has  our 
Government  defined,  judicially  and  positively,  what  is  the 
legal  status  of  an  Indian,  or  of  an  Indian  tribe  possessing 
territory  within  our  domain.  For  lack  of  such  an  authori- 
tative definition,  our  own  policy  has  been  inconstant  and 
inconsistent,  having  no  guiding  principle,  and  so  to  all  ef- 
fects it  has  been  faithless  and  unjust.  At  the  same  time  the 
Indians  themselves,  interpreting  our  covenants  with  them 
as  acknowledging  certain  claims  and  rights  of  theirs,  which 
in  reality  we  did  not  recognize,  have  justly  charged  us  with 
breach  of  faith  towards  them.  In  fact,  without  any  legally 
defined  status,  the  Indians  have  impersonated  to  us  a  very 
large  variety  of  characters,  all  of  them  depreciatory  to  them- 
selves, and  admitting  of  wrong  and  encroachment  on  our 
part,  as  under  none  of  those  characters  did  we  recognize 
them  as  appearing  in  that  which  we  had  ourselves  assigned 
to  them  as  independent  peoples.  The  same  Indian  tribes 
have  been  to  us  alternately  wards  of  the  nation,  independent 
proprietors,  subject  vassals,  allied  and  inconstant  friends, 


538  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

outlaws,  and  avowed  implacable  enemies,  to  be  dealt  with  as 
wild  beasts  and  then  paupers.  We  have  made  with  them  sol- 
emn covenants,  pledging  to  them  their  territory  as  reserva- 
tions, and  we  have  broken  these  covenants  as  wisps  of  straw. 
We  have  agreed  to  defend  their  lands  against  encroachments 
by  the  whites ;  and  then  when  settlers,  surveyors,  miners, 
and  railroad  engineers  have  invaded  them,  we  have  sent 
our  armies  to  protect,  not  the  Indians,  but  the  white  men. 
Our  national  Government  has  made  treaties  with  tribes, 
reserving  to  them  territories  that  soon  after  were  found  to 
lie  within  the  bounds  of  newly  created  States,  which  at  once 
claimed  supreme  rights  of  domain.  And  the  Indians  have 
been  as  much  mystified  as  were  foreigners  in  our  late  civil 
war,  to  dispose  of  the  perplexities  arising  from  a  conflict 
between  National  and  State  sovereignty.  Meanwhile  much 
is  to  be  allowed  to  the  ever-changing  aspects  and  bearings 
of  the  questions  at  issue,  and  to  the  coming  in  of  new  and 
unforeseen  elements  which  have  perplexed  it.  The  shift- 
ing, of  the  frontiers  of  civilization,  by  a  much  more  rapid 
advance  through  emigration  and  occupation  than  was  ever 
dreamed  of,  has  crowded  the  Indians ;  and  the  discovery  of 
enormous  mining  wealth,  of  comparatively  little  use  to  the 
savages,  in  their  reservations  which  we  had  made  over  to 
them  simply  as  hunting-grounds,  has  seemed  to  justify  a  re- 
consideration of  the  bargain.  The  plea  is,  "  We  had  given 
the  Indians  hunting-grounds ;  we  never  intended  to  make 
over  to  them  our  gold  mines." 

But  the  fundamental  error  in  our  policy,  the  root  of  most 
of  the  evil,  of  wrong  towards  the  Indians,  and  of  acts  of 
perfidy  on  the  part  of  our  Government,  —  the  error,  as  it 
is  now  admitted  to  have  been,  with  which  we  started, — was 
that  of  entering  into  treaties  with  Indian  tribes  as  inde- 
pendent powers  or  nations.  In  reality  we  never  really  so 
regarded  them ;  and  the  only  relief  we  can  find  from  the 
charge  of  intentionally  deceiving  the  Indians,  in  assuming 
or  pretending  so  to  view  them,  is  in  uttering  the  after- 


TREATIES  IN   THE  FOREST.  539 

thought  of  wisdom, — we  did  not  clearly  think  about  or 
understand  what  we  were  doing.  A  treaty  between  two 
nations  (and  both  parties  must  be  nations,  sovereigns,  in 
order  that  they  may  make  treaty  relations)  proceeds  upon 
certain  understood  and  implied  facts, —  that  both  parties 
stand  for  the  purpose  on  an  equality  of  rights  and  dignities ; 
that  they  thoroughly  understand  what  they  are  doing ;  that 
they  have  in  view  joint  or  mutual  advantages,  and  recog- 
nize mutual  responsibilities  ;  and  that  a  breach  of  covenant 
by  either  party  will  justify  remonstrance  and  the  use  of 
force,  which  the  other  party  is  supposed  to  have  at  command 
for  righting  or  avenging  itself.  Now  all  the  forms  and 
pretences  of  dealing  with  Indian  tribes  as  independent  sov- 
ereignties, able  to  enforce  the  conditions  of  a  covenant,  have 
been  merely  farcical.  Our  authorities  have  known  from  the 
beginning,  when  authenticating  such  treaty  documents,  that 
the  whole  proceeding  was  a  ludicrous  travesty  of  the  digni- 
fied and  cautious  processes  by  which  we  have  made  our 
treaties  with,  for  instance,  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Rus- 
sia,—  nations  that  could  either  hold  us  to  terms,  or  to  a 
reckoning.  We  may  invest  with  all  possible  awe  and  dig- 
nity a  scene  in  the  forest  where  white  commissioners  are 
holding  a  council  with  chieftains  of  a  savage  tribe,  as  the 
pipe  of  peace  goes  round  with  the  grave  and  taciturn  braves ; 
the  treaty  may  be  engrossed,  signed,  and  sealed  with  forest 
hieroglyphics,  —  but  it  is  all  a  mere  sham;  and  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  the  white  parties  to  it  did  not  feel  it  to 
be  so  at  the  time.  No  effort  of  imagination  in  the  civilized 
party  could  run  any  parallel  or  similitude  between  the 
making  of  a  treaty  at  Ghent,  Paris,  London,  or  Washing- 
ton, as  between  real  nationalities,  and  the  treaty  in  the 
woods  with  grimly  painted  and  greased,  blanketed  and 
feathered  barbarians,  apostrophizing  sun  and  moon  in  their 
rhetoric,  grunting  out  their  assent  or  dissent,  with  an  eye 
to  the  coming  feast  and  the  distribution  of  the  presents. 
The  robed  and  wigged  dignitaries  of  a  court  ceremonial 


540  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

would  only  make  the  show  more  ludicrous.  The  very 
names  on  these  Indian  treaties,  illustrated  with  bows, 
hatchets,  bears,  birds,  snakes,  and  other  emblematical  de- 
vices,—  names  such  as  Tall  Wolf,  Red  Nose,  Big  Head, 
Porcupine  Bear,  Looking-Glass,  Big  Thunder,  and  Yellow 
Smoke,  —  suggest  a  travesty.  The  Indians  did  not  suppose 
that  the  treaties  gave  or  originated  their  titles  to  land,  but 
simply  recognized  their  prior,  existing,  original  rights. 
And  so  when  the  United  States  asked  the  privilege  of  open- 
ing military  or  emigrant  routes  through  these  lands,  the 
Indians  were  confirmed  in  their  view  by  the  agreement  of 
the  Government  to  pay  for  this  privilege. 

Such  treaties  have  been  made  with  mere  fragments  of 
different,  defeated,  and  allied  tribes ;  with  tribes  setting  up 
rival  claims  to  the  same  territory ;  with  tribes  that  have  but 
for  a  very  short  time  got  possession  of  strange  territory  by 
conquest  or  roaming.  Yet  they  have  all  been  treated  with 
equal  mock  dignity  as  foreigners,  independent  nationali- 
ties ;  we  all  the  while  knowing  that  in  our  sober  view  they 
were  nothing  of  the  sort.  In  order  that  a  nation  may  have 
a  footing  for  entering  into  treaty  relations  with  one  sover- 
eign power,  it  must  be  equally  free,  unless  it  waives  the 
right,  to  make  treaties  with  other  like  powers.  Now  it 
would  be  no  unfair  test  of  what  we  conceive  to  be  the  na- 
ture of  our  treaties  with  our  Indian  tribes,  to  ask  how  we 
should  feel  and  what  we  should  do,  if  those  red  sovereigns 
entered  into  similar  covenants,  say,  with  Great  Britain, 
France,  or  Russia. 

A  volume  of  one  thousand  and  seventy-five  royal  octavo 
pages,  from  the  Government  printing-office  in  Washington, 
published  in  1873,  bears  the  title,  "A  Compilation  of  all 
the  Treaties  between  the  United  States  and  the  Indian 
Tribes  now  in  Force  as  Laws."  It  is  a  most  remarkable 
and  suggestive,  though  a  strangely  perplexing,  volume.  Its 
contents  are  not  arranged  chronologically  in  the  order  in 
which  the  treaties  were  made,  but  alphabetically,  by  the 


NUMBER  AND  TERMS  OP  TREATIES.  541 

names  —  often  unfamiliar  and  uncouth  —  of  the  bodies  of 
Indians  with  which  the  covenants  were  confirmed.  An- 
other "  List  of  all  Indian  Treaties  and  Agreements  made," 
etc.,  appears  in  the  annual  Report  of  the  Commissioner 
of  Indian  Affairs  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  for 
1881,  arranged  in  the  same  alphabetical  order,  with  dates. 
There  are  six  hundred  and  forty-two  such  covenants  referred 
to  by  title  in  this  latter  summary.  The  volume  first  men- 
tioned gives  the  full  text  of  the  treaties,  with  the  places 
where  formed,  ratified,  or  proclaimed,  with  revisions  and 
supplementary  articles,  and  several  lists  and  schedules  of 
allotments  of  land  or  money  distributions  to  individual 
Indians,  their  families  or  representatives.  One  would  need 
an  elastic  patience  to  read  this  volume.  But  the  turning 
over  its  pages  cursorily  will  alike  bewilder,  astonish,  and 
instruct.  The  utter  impracticability,  not  to  say  impos- 
sibility, of  keeping  the  covenants  under  the  conditions 
pledged  to  meet  the  emergencies  and  crises  which  our 
Government  has  been  dealing  with  for  a  full  century  in  its 
relations  with  the  Indians,  will  be  so  obvious  to  the  reader 
that  he  will  be  ready  to  condone  some  of  the  wrong  inci- 
dental to  breaches  of  them.  Apart  from  all  that  we  have 
to  marvel  over  and  to  regret  on  this  score,  the  volume  will 
in  future  years  have  an  interest  of  an  antiquarian  and  his- 
torical character,  something  like  to  that  of  Homer's  list 
of  ships.  Some  of  the  names  of  Indian  bands  are  already 
obsolete.  It  may  therefore  be  of  use  in  coming  years  for 
communities  in  flourishing  and  populous  States  in  the 
north  and  west  of  the  country  to  recall  the  tribal  desig- 
nations of  some  of  the  bands  having  covenanted  titles  to 
parcels  of  their  territory. 

Infinite  and  harassing,  and  incapable  of  adjustment,  have 
been  the  embarrassments  into  which  our  Government  has 
been  drawn  by  its  treaties  with  parties  not  having  the  sta- 
tus for  enforcing  or  even  making  treaties.  In  the  treaty 
with  the  Choctaws  and  Chickasaws,  in  1866,  Congress  cov- 


542  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

enanted  for  the  rights  of  people  of  African  descent  residing 
among  them.  These  rights  the  councils  of  the  Indian  na- 
tions refused  to  yield  or  sanction.  So  Congress  was  called 
upon  to  appropriate  three  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  re- 
move elsewhere  the  proscribed  race.  Probably  this  asser- 
tion of  a  prerogative  and  breach  of  compact  by  those  In- 
dian councils  comes  the  nearest  of  any  instance  in  our 
history  to  an  effective  assertion  and  defence  of  its  claimed 
sovereignty  by  any  Indian  tribe.  Congress  stipulated  with 
the  people  of  Georgia  to  extinguish  the  Indian  title  to  all 
lands  in  that  State,  and  yet  covenanted  with  the  Creeks  and 
Cherokees  that  they  should  hold  their  lands  there  forever. 
Now  it  is  not  strange  that  the  arts  of  the  white  man  in 
making,  breaking,  and  trifling  with  Indian  treaties  should 
seem  to  warrant  what  a  head  of  our  modern  peace  commis- 
sion tells  us,  thus :  "  Whatever  our  people  may  choose  to 
say  of  the  insincerity  or  duplicity  of  the  Indians,  would  fail 
to  express  the  estimate  entertained  by  many  Indians  of  the 
white  man's  character  in  this  respect  of  broken  promises, 
cunning,  cupidity,  and  cruelty." 

But  even  the  principle  supposed  to  have  been  adopted 
and  followed  from  the  first  by  our  Government  in  recogniz- 
ing a  right  of  occupancy  and  of  perpetual  use  by  any  Indian 
tribe  of  territory  actually  inhabited  and  hunted  over  by 
them,  has  by  no  means  been  honored  in  all  cases.  This 
local  native  right  would  have  been  of  some  value  to  the  In- 
dian and  some  restraint  upon  the  white  man,  had  it  really 
been  respected  in  its  terms  and  consequences  as  among  civ- 
ilized parties.  It  is  notorious,  however,  that  this  right  has 
never  been  able  to  stand  against  the  white  man's  purpose 
and  resolve  to  acquire  any  territory  when  he  could  plead 
his  need  or  desire  of  it.  The  Indian's  right  to  hold  was 
subordinate  to  the  white  man's  right  to  buy,  —  a  right 
which  involved  the  other  right  of  compelling  the  Indians 
to  sell,  on  terms,  too,  which  in  effect  the  purchaser  himself 
dictated. 


VALIDITY  OF  THE  TREATIES.  543 

There  have,  likewise,  been  cases  in  which  this  occupancy 
right  of  tribes  to  any  coveted  territory  was  wholly  over- 
looked and  coolly  disregarded ;  no  account  whatever  being 
made  of  it.  This  was  signally  true  in  the  case  of  the  tribes 
occupying  the  present  Territories  of  Oregon  and  Washing- 
ton. Our  Government,  in  connection  with  public  and  pri- 
vate promoters  of  the  enterprise,  offered  strong  inducements 
to  settlers  to  enter  upon  and  occupy  those  lands,  without 
even  the  slightest  previous  attempt  to  extinguish  the  Indian 
title,  indeed  without  even  a  recognition  of  it.  This  was  all 
the  more  to  be  deplored  because  the  natives  there  had  long 
been  under  the  influence  of  the  agents  of  the  Hudson  Bay 
Company,  who  trafficked  freely  with  them,  maintaining  the 
most  friendly  intercourse.  The  Indians,  therefore,  were 
substantially  British  subjects.  When  suddenly  they  found 
Americans,  of  whom  they  were  jealous  and  whom  they  de- 
spised, settling  upon  their  best  lands,  they  were  naturally 
exasperated  to  acts  of  hostility. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  system  under  which  treaties 
have  been  solemnly  made  with  the  pledged  faith  of  the  Uni- 
ted States,  and  then  by  the  connivance  or  assistance  of  the 
same  supreme  authority  have  been  broken  and  substantially 
repudiated,  may  be  instanced  that  with  the  Sioux,  for  the 
infraction  of  which  the  long  drawn-out  penalty  is  being  still 
inflicted  upon  us  in  the  threatenings  of  bloody  and  costly 
strife. 

The  Constitution  pronounces  all  treaties  to  be  the  su- 
preme law  of  the  land.  Our  Supreme  Court  has  pro- 
nounced them  binding  and  inviolable,  overruling  anything 
in  the  constitution  or  laws  of  the  single  States.  The 
famous  ordinance  of  1787,  for  the  government  of  the  ter- 
ritory northwest  of  the  Ohio,  covenanted  that  the  utmost 
good  faith  should  always  be  kept  with  the  Indians,  that 
their  lands,  property,  rights,  and  liberties  should  be  secured 
and  respected,  without  encroachment  or  disturbance,  and 
that  from  time  to  time  just  and  humane  laws  should  be 


544  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

made  for  their  protection  and  welfare.  President  Wash- 
ington and  his  successors,  with  the  authority  and  rati- 
fication of  successive  Congresses,  have  again  and  again 
renewed  this  covenant. 

The  Sioux,  who  with  affiliated  tribes  had  occupied  large 
portions  of  this  territory,  had  long  been  regarded  as  a  brave 
and  noble  race  of  red  men  of  a  superior  grade,  and  as  ever 
friendly  to  the  whites,  as  the  officers  of  the  Northwest  Fur- 
Company  who  had  intimate  relations  with  them  had  testi- 
fied. They  ranged  from  the  British  border  on  the  north  to 
Kansas  on  the  south,  and  from  the  sources  of  the  Missis- 
sippi to  the  spurs  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  through  a  rich 
and  splendid  country,  for  game,  fish,  and  fruits.  The  tribes 
consented  to  regard  themselves  as  within  the  territorial 
bounds  of  the  United  States,  and  claimed  protection  under 
our  supremacy.  After  a  succession  of  minor  treaties  had 
been  made  with  them,  the  ripening  of  circumstances  under 
what  we  call  the  exigencies  and  rights  of  civilization  de- 
manded a  very  serious  and  decisive  negotiation  with  them. 
The  constant  pushing  forward  of  the  frontiers,  the  prospect- 
ing companies  of  miners,  the  emigrant  trails  to  California 
and  Oregon  were  opening  an  incessant  encroachment  on 
their  territory,  and  a  bloody  war  or  a  peaceful  disposal  of 
all  matters  of  strife  presented  an  alternative  to  our  Gov- 
ernment. A  treaty  was  made  at  Fort  Laramie,  in  1851, 
between  the  United  States  and  these  tribes,  under  which  it 
was  covenanted  that  a  region  of  about  one  hundred  thou- 
sand square  miles,  —  larger  than  the  area  of  New  York, 
Pennsylvania,  and  New  Jersey, —  including  the  largest  and 
best  part  of  Colorado,  and  parts  of  Dakota,  Nebraska,  and 
Kansas,  should  be  secured  to  them,  while  the  Government 
was  to  be  allowed  to  make  military  and  other  roads,  with 
stations  for  agencies  on  the  territory,  and  to  have  its  citi- 
zens protected  in  their  transit.  The  Indians  were  to  yield 
all  claims  to  any  other  lands,  except  the  retaining  a  right 
to  hunt  and  fish  in  roaming  freely  over  them.  They  were 


VIOLATED   PLEDGES.  545 

also  to  receive  from  the  Government  an  annuity  of  fifty 
thousand  dollars  a  year  for  fifty  years.  This  last  agree- 
ment, after  the  Indians  had  by  their  representatives  con- 
firmed the  treaty,  was  altered  without  their  knowledge  or 
consent,  when  the  Senate  came  to  act  upon  it,  the  appro- 
priation being  by  that  body  limited  to  ten  years. 

After  the  Rebellion  there  was  a  rush  of  unsettled  and 
enterprising  adventurers  from  our  borders  seeking  the 
treasures  of  the  mines  of  Montana  and  Colorado.  No 
thought  or  regard  whatever  was  had  for  the  pledged  rights 
of  the  Indians.  Even  before  this  general  intrusion  there 
had  been  many  encroachments  upon  them,  with  the  conse- 
quent disturbances  and  outrages.  So  that  even  in  1861 
the  Government  had  made  a  new  treaty,  greatly  qualifying 
the  conditions  of  that  of  ten  years  before.  By  this  the 
bounds  of  the  Indian  reservation  were  reduced,  and  an 
annuity  of  sixty  thousand  dollars  a  year  was  promised 
them  for  fifteen  years.  But  in  vain  was  it  sought  to  re- 
press the  encroachments  of  the  white  man,  settler  or 
farmer.  Hostilities  on  both  sides  increased,  and  in  1864 
occurred  the  horrid  tragedy  known  as  the  Sand  Creek  Mas- 
sacre. A  mixed  commission  of  army  officers  and  civilians 
thought  they  had  succeeded  in  their  pacific  work ;  but  none 
the  less  a  war  ensued  which  cost  our  Government  thirty 
millions  of  dollars ;  leaving  the  Indians  unsubdued,  and 
complaining  (as  well  they  might)  of  our  perfidy  and  their 
wrongs.  Still  another  treaty,  made  in  1865,  stripped  them 
of  Colorado,  and  another  region  in  Kansas  was  "  set  apart 
for  the  absolute  use  and  undisturbed  occupation  of  the 
Cheyennes  and  Arapahoes ; "  and  for  forty  years  a  pension 
of  forty  dollars  a  year  was  to  be  paid  to  each  of  them.  A 
part  of  this  new  reservation  had  already  been  assigned  to 
the  Cherokees.  By  an  Act  of  Congress  of  1834  all  annui- 
ties promised  to  the  Indians  are  made  chargeable  for  any 
depredations  committed  by  them  on  the  frontier  or  travel- 
ling white  men.  Claims  for  damages  on  this  score,  fol- 

35 


546  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

lowed  by  an  injunction  on  the  Indian  annuity  funds,  are 
enormous  in  amount ;  and  the  adjustment  of  them,  whether 
they  are  honest  or  fraudulent,  is  a  matter  of  bitter  quarrel 
and  controversy.  In  some  cases  these  claims,  if  allowed, 
would  exhaust  all  the  funds,  and  poverty  and  the  sense  of 
wrong  would  set  the  Indians  on  further  raids. 

Of  the  feelings  with  which  some  of  the  most  intelligent 
of  the  chiefs  were  made  parties  to  the  cession  of  their 
lands,  a  graphic  illustration  is  offered  in  the  following 
extract. 

Major-General  George  A.  McCall,  in  his  "  Letters  from 
the  Frontiers"  (1868),  thus  describes  a  scene  at  Fort  Arm- 
strong in  General  Gaines's  negotiation  with  Keokuk  and 
Black  Hawk,  in  1831 :  — 

"The  artful  negotiator  Keokuk  called  on  the  General,  in  all  the 
finery  of  official  dress,  conspicuous  in  which  was  a  necklace  of  the 
formidable  claws  of  the  grizzly  bear, — which,  by  the  by,  it  is  whis- 
pered he  procured  with  the  silver  bullet  [purchased],  —  and  in  gran- 
diloquent speech  reported  the  success  of  his  mission  ;  and  that 
Black  Hawk  would  come  in  the  next  day  and  renew  the  treaty, 
relinquishing  the  territory  latterly  in  dispute. 

"  At  the  appointed  time  Black  Hawk  appeared.  There  were  in 
attendance  about  fifty  chiefs  and  distinguished  warriors ;  but  all  on 
this  occasion  were  unarmed.  All  being  seated  in  due  form,  the 
treaty,  which  in  the  interval  I  had  been  ordered  to  draw  up,  I  read 
sentence  by  sentence  [interpreted].  I  called  up  Black  Hawk  to 
affix,  in  his  official  character,  his  sign  manual  to  the  paper.  He 
arose  slowly,  and  with  great  dignity,  while  in  the  expression  of  his 
fine  face  there  was  a  deep-seated  grief  and  humiliation  that  no  one 
could  witness  unmoved.  The  sound  of  his  heel  upon  the  floor,  as 
he  strode  majestically  forward,  was  measured  and  distinct.  When 
he  reached  the  table  where  I  sat  I  handed  him  a  pen,  and  pointed 
to  the  place  where  he  was  to  affix  the  mark  that  would  sunder  the 
tie  he  held  most  dear  on  earth.  He  took  the  pen  ;  made  a  large, 
bold  cross  with  a  force  which  rendered  that  pen  forever  unfit  for 
further  use ;  then,  returning  it  politely,  lie  turned  short  upon  his 
heel,  and  resumed  his  seat  in  the  manner  he  had  left  it.  It  was  an 


SPOILS   OF  THE   BLACK   HILLS.  547 

imposing  ceremony,  and  scarcely  a  breath  was  drawn  by  any  one 
present  during  its  passage.  Thus  ended  the  scene,  —  one  of  the 
most  impressive  of  the  kind  I  ever  looked  upon.  And  with  it  ter- 
minated the  duty  which  had  led  General  Gaines  to  visit  Fort 
Armstrong"  (pp.  241,  242). 

There  has  always  been  a  variance  and  strife  about  the 
rights  conceded  to  the  Indians  of  hunting  and  roaming  on 
uncecled  territory  outside  of  their  reservations.  Though 
this  right  has  been  in  terms  stipulated,  and  Congress  has 
even  made  provision  of  partial  payment  to  Indians  roaming, 
some  military  officers  and  agents  have  insisted  that  being 
found  outside  of  the  reservations  is  an  indication  of  hostile 
intentions  on  the  part  of  the  roamers,  and  cuts  them  off 
from  their  claim  in  the  distribution  of  the  supplies.  Nor  are 
the  perplexity  and  bitterness  arising  from  this  source  re- 
lieved by  the  well-known  fact,  that,  while  the  large  body  of 
a  tribe  may  remain  seemingly  content  on  their  reserva- 
tions, parties  of  restless  young  warriors  may  mischievously 
break  bounds,  to  raid  and  steal,  furnished  with  the  very 
guns,  ammunition,  blankets,  and  food  just  distributed  from 
the  agencies. 

But  the  swiftly  circulated  reports  of  the  treasures  in  the 
Black  Hills  —  which  lay  within  the  limits  solemnly  pledged 
to  the  Indians,  and  which  it  seems  they  regarded  with  a 
superstitious  reverence  —  stirred  the  passion  and  greed  of 
adventurers.  Of  course  the  fabled  wealth  in  them  was 
destined  to  the  uses  of  civilization,  whatever  claims  the 
barbarian  might  set  up.  In  utter  contempt  of  all  our 
Government  covenants,  the  Indians  saw  a  steady  stream 
of  adventurers  and  gold-hunters  rushing  through  to  Utah, 
Oregon,  and  California.  The  placers  of  the  miners  and 
the  cultivated  grounds  needed  for  their  supplies,  with 
the  groggeries,  saloons,  and  gambling-halls  of  incipient 
cities  and  rows  of  dwellings,  were  occupied  and  crowded 
as  by  magic  by  those  who  regarded  the  Indians  as  but 
vermin. 


548  THE  U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND  THE  INDIANA. 

Meanwhile  the  Government,  whatever  its  plighted  faith, 
also  felt  that  its  paramount — saying  nothing  of  its  primary 
—  obligations  compelled  it  to  stand  for  the  rights  and  inter- 
ests of  civilization  against  barbarism,  of  white  men  mining 
instead  of  red  men  hunting.  Government  sent  out  survey- 
ing, exploring,  and  then  military  parties  to  penetrate  and 
examine  regions  which  were  then  unknown  to  the  whites, 
which  had  been  surveyed  only  by  longitudinal  and  latitudi- 
nal measurements,  and  which  it  had  been  agreed  that  the 
white  man  should  hold  as  forbidden  to  him.  Of  course  the 
Sioux  war  in  Minnesota,  and  then  a  general  Indian  panic 
and  uprising,  were  the  results.  By  making  and  breaking 
successive  treaties,  the  United  States  first  created  and  fos- 
tered in  the  minds  of  the  Indians  the  preposterous  notion 
that  they  held  a  limitless  fee  of  possession  in  these  enor- 
mous reaches  of  territory ;  and  then  after  purchasing  parts 
of  them,  and  pledging  the  remainder  to  the  Indians  forever 
as  still  theirs,  mocked  at  the  Indians  for  thinking  us  in 
earnest,  as  if  we  really  meant  to  countenance  them  in  their 
foolish  resistance  to  the  progress  of  the  age.  In  1874,  that 
hero  in  our  Civil  War,  the  youthful  and  lamented  General 
Ouster,  destined  to  fall  a  victim  in  the  war  which  he  helped 
to  open  with  the  Sioux,  was  sent  on  an  expedition  to  the 
Black  Hills,  and  he  accomplished  it  successfully,  the  In- 
dians of  course  protesting  and  complaining,  though  not 
at  once  fighting.  Acts  of  outrage,  however,  were  done  by 
roaming  parties,  and  war  was  imminent.  Major-General 
Stanley  wrote  from  Dakota  that  he  was  "  ashamed  longer 
to  appear  in  the  presence  of  the  chiefs  of  the  different 
tribes  of  the  Sioux,  who  inquire  why  we  do  not  do  as  we 
promised,  and  in  their  vigorous  language  aver  that  we  have 
lied."  Sitting  Bull  explained  his  refusal  to  come  under 
any  treaty  relations  by  this  vernacular  sentence :  "  When- 
ever you  have  found  a  white  man  who  will  tell  the  truth, 
you  may  return,  and  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  you."  In  1875, 
a  commission  sent  to  treat  for  the  surrender  of  the  Black 


FORMALITIES   OF   A   COUNCIL.  549 

Hills  was  unsuccessful.  Then,  of  course,  followed  the  war, 
in  which,  perhaps  more  than  in  any  other  waged  by  us  with 
the  savages,  we  have  been  made  acquainted  with  their  re- 
served power,  and  with  the  depth  of  their  conviction  and 
resolve  that  they  have  some  human  rights.  War  is  the  rec- 
ognized resource  of  white  men  under  the  infraction  of  a 
treaty.  Why  not  then  of  red  men  ?  Had  the  mining  region 
which  tempted  invaders  been  among  the  wilds  on  the  other 
side  of  the  British  borders,  and  our  citizens,  bent  on  the 
development  of  all  buried  treasures  in  the  interest  of  civil- 
ization, made  their  raids  there,  what  would  have  followed  ? 
Formal  expressed  diplomatic  "  distinguished  considera- 
tions," and  then,  if  these  were  unsatisfactory,  fighting. 
But  we  say  the  Black  Hills  are  within  our  own  domains, 
and  the  Indians,  —  half  citizens,  half  wards,  —  are  really 
bound  to  make  common  cause  with  us  in  opening  our 
common  country. 

If  we  may  draw  a  reasonable  inference  from  the  tedious 
and  prolix  formalities  and  the  stiff  ceremonial  of  a  council 
with  Indian  tribes  for  settling  a  peace,  the  cession  of  terri- 
tory, or  the  negotiations  of  a  contract,  we  should  judge  that 
while  the  white  party  cannot  but  have  looked  upon  it  rather 
from  its  ludicrous  side,  and  held  even  its  pledged  obliga- 
tions as  likely  to  be  but  of  a  slight  and  temporary  validity, 
the  Indians  themselves,  though  notoriously  inconstant  and 
treacherous  to  their  own  promises,  did  notwithstanding 
wish  and  intend  that  the  business  should  have  a  very  impos- 
ing and  solemn  dignity.  The  impatience  and  the  banter 
which  we  expend  upon  the  routine  methods,  the  official 
intricacies,  and  the  long-drawn  delays  in  the  disposal 
of  affairs  between  civilized  people  and  in  the  processes  of 
each  department  of  a  government,  might  find  full  provoca- 
tives in  the  rehearsal  of  the  proceedings  of  an  Indian  coun- 
cil. Red  tape  and  circumlocution  have  full  sway  there. 
Commissioners  and  military  officers  who  have  transacted 
such  business  with  a  company  of  chiefs  representing  sey- 


550  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

eral  tribes  at  one  council  have  found  their  endurance  taxed 
to  the  utmost,  and  the  soldiers  would  at  times  have  much 
preferred  the  excitement  of  a  campaign. 

The  council  must  be  deliberately  agreed  upon  and  pre- 
pared for  with  stately  preliminaries.  The  squaws  in  the 
Indian  villages  must  be  set  to  work  in  making  the  wampum 
belts,  with  their  symbolic  colors,  blendings,  and  hieroglyph- 
ics ;  and  the  whites  must  as  busily,  and  with  more  cost, 
prepare  and  transport  the  presents.  In  many  tribes  a 
wampum  belt  is  necessary  in  the  statement  or  ratification 
of  each  rhetorical  certification  of  the  speech,  and  of  each 
proposition  or  term  in  the  covenant.  There  are  solemn 
pauses  and  silences  in  which  the  parties  might  be  supposed, 
by  an  onlooker,  to  be  holding  a  Quaker  meeting.  There  are 
the  complimentary  exchanges  of  handshaking  with  the  greasy 
and  grotesquely  arrayed  Stoics  of  the  woods,  with  solemn 
and  demure  watchfulness  against  the  wandering  of  eye  or 
thought,  to  the  let-down  of  stateliness  or  dignity.  Then 
comes  the  squatting  on  the  grass  in  concentric  circles,  or  the 
stiff  seating  on  the  skin-covered  bushes, —  age  and  wisdom, 
and  repute  as  a  brave,  giving  title  to  sit  in  the  innermost 
circle,  while  those  who  have  yet  to  win  their  spurs  as  re- 
nowned warriors  look  over  the  heads  of  the  inmost  groups 
from  outside.  The  passing  round  of  the  pipe  is  another 
wearying  interval.  When  speech-making  is  reached,  the 
work  goes  on  with  tedious  slowness,  no  interruptions  or 
interlocutions  being  suffer  able.  Never  is  the  business 
finished  at  one  sitting.  The  answering  party  must  take  a 
night  for  deliberating  on  the  reply  for  the  next,  or  some 
subsequent  day. 

Besides  the  original  and  radical  error  of  our  National 
Indian  policy,  —  so  long  continued,  and  so  impracticable  as 
to  compel  us  to  violate  our  own  covenants  with  them,  — 
the  policy  of  making  treaties  to  last  "  forever "  with  them 
as  independent,  sovereign  nations,  we  have  made  many 
other  mistakes  which  have  had  very  serious  consequences. 


MISTAKES   IN   MANAGEMENT.  551 

These  mistakes  have  been  related  and  incident  to  our 
primary  error.  They  have  directly  operated  to  the  injury 
of  the  natives,  and  are  now  found  to  offer  vexatious  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  the  wiser  methods  which  we  are 
seeking  to  adopt.  Among  these  errors  three  have  been 
especially  mischievous. 

First,  after  having  with  much  cost  and  management  as- 
signed a  reservation  to  some  troublesome  tribe  and  planted 
it  on  the  territory,  we  have  been  induced,  by  the  advances 
of  civilization  and  the  trespasses  of  the  whites  upon  it,  to 
move  off  the  tribe  to  another  region.  In  some  cases  this 
has  been  done  four  or  five  times.  The  Indians  have  thus 
been  kept  in  a  restless  and  unsettled  condition,  which  has 
in  fact  aggravated  their  roaming  tendencies,  and  precluded 
their  forming  any  local  associations. 

A  second  error  has  been  in  assigning  to  these  treaty 
tribes,  as  reservations,  altogether  too  extensive  regions  of 
territory,  —  so  large,  in  fact,  as  to  encourage  the  expecta- 
tion that  they  may  continue  to  live  by  their  old  methods 
of  the  chase,  without  labor.  We  have  learned  that  any 
hopeful  policy  towards  the  Indians  must  look  to  the  break- 
ing up  of  their  tribal  relations,  and  leading  each  individual 
and  family  to  a  proprietorship  of  lots  or  parcels  of  ground. 
We  have  greatly  hindered  this  result  in  assigning  to  a  tribe 
so  vast  an  expanse  of  wild  land  as  to  confirm  their  old  hab- 
its of  holding  it  in  common  and  trusting  their  livelihood  to 
its  natural  products. 

The  third  of  these  errors  is,  that,  in  conformity  with  the 
terms  of  nearly  all  the  older  treaties,  we  have  paid  the  In- 
dians, for  the  cession  of  their  lands,  in  money  annuities,  to 
pass  into  the  hands  of  their  chiefs,  or  to  be  distributed  per 
capita,  through  the  agents.  These  sums  of  money  have 
been  squandered  thriftlessly,  and  have  made  the  Indians 
the  easy  spoil  of  grasping  traders  in  whiskey  and  gewgaws, 
encouraging  them  in  laziness  and  profligacy.  Nor  has  the 
result  been  much  better  when  the  annuities  have  been  paid 


552  THE   U.  S.  GOVERNMENT   AND   THE   INDIANS. 

in  food  and  clothing,  turning  the  Indians  into  dependent 
paupers.  The  better  and  hopeful  policy  now  requires  that 
we  restrict  the  Indians  in  space  and  assure  to  them  per- 
manent residence,  to  break  up  their  roaming  habits  and  to 
make  them  individual  proprietors ;  and  that  we  pay  their 
annuities  in  farming  and  household  implements,  in  build- 
ings, schools,  and  land  improvements. 


CHAPTER  X. 

MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY  WITH   THE  INDIANS. 

ONE  of  the  great  primary  truths  which  it  has  taken  the 
world  a  long  time  to  discover,  and  which,  when  discovered, 
is  announced  in  that  simple  form  of  speech  befitting  the 
royalty  of  Truth,  is  this :  That  nothing  in  public  or  private 
affairs,  in  government  or  in  the  relations  between  man  and 
man,  has  been  settled  till  it  has  been  settled  aright.  Till 
that  happy  and  sure  disposal  of  any  issue  has  been  reached, 
discord,  passion,  wasteful  expedients,  and  failure  attend  all 
discussions  of  it,  all  dealing  with  it.  Experiment  and  shift- 
ing policy  will  still  keep  it  open,  but  only  justice  and  right 
can  ever  dispose  of  it. 

And  that  is  the  reason  why  we  have  before  us  to-day,  un- 
der open  and  impassioned  debate,  in  the  councils  of  Con- 
gress, in  our  Cabinet  bureaus,  and  in  the  military  posts  on 
our  frontiers,  a  very  old  question,  —  a  century  old,  but  as 
fresh  to  us  as  if  it  were  of  this  year's  origin.  It  is  called 
the  Indian  Question.  No  one  can  appreciate,  without  much 
inquiry  and  search,  the  effort,  labor,  wise  and  honest  pur- 
pose on  the  one  hand,  nor  know  how  much  of  aimless  and 
wasteful  experiment,  wild  campaigning,  and  baffled  legisla- 
tion on  the  other,  have  been  spent  on  that  question.  It  has 
not  been,  it  is  not,  settled  simply  because  we  have  not 
reached  the  right  solution  of  it.  Yet  this  oracular  state- 
ment—  that  nothing  is  settled  till  it  is  settled  aright — does 
not  bring  with  it  to  those  who  utter  it,  nor  to  those  who  at 
once  assent  to  it,  the  needful  wisdom,  ability,  and  means 


554  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

even  for  deciding  what  is  right,  much  less  for  securing  it. 
The  utmost  force  of  the  assertion  avails  only  to  fix  the  re- 
solve that  we  will  aim  to  do  the  right  when  we  are  certi- 
fied what  it  is  and  can  engage  all  our  resources  to  that  end. 
Any  one  who  to-day  wishes  to  form  in  his  own  mind  a  clear 
and  tenable  opinion  on  the  great  question,  while  availing 
himself  of  what  would  seem  to  be  sufficient  and  adequate 
means  of  information  and  judgment,  must  be  content  if  he 
can  draw  grains  of  truthful  and  helpful  wisdom  from  the 
mass  of  crude,  one-sided,  and  superficial  opinions  and  utter- 
ances upon  it.  It  will  be  well  if,  while  one  comes  to  realize 
the  vast  perplexities  and  embarrassments  which  complicate 
the  subject,  he  can  keep  his  hold  of  a  single  guiding  thread 
either  of  expediency  or  justice.  The  long  debating  and  ex- 
perimenting on  this  question  have  not,  however,  been  fruit- 
less. Circumstances,  too,  in  the  changes  of  time  and  in  the 
relations  of  things,  have  increased  our  means  alike  of  wis- 
dom and  of  power  for  disposing  of  the  question.  Let  us 
take  note,  first,  of  some  of  the  helps  and  facilities  which  we 
have  reached  for  dealing  wisely  and  rightly  with  it. 

1.  We  have  acquired  a  large  amount  of  very  needful  and 
practical  information  about  the  numbers,  the  condition,  the 
relations,  and  the  nature  of  the  Indian  tribes.  Till  within 
a  few  years,  though  we  had  known  Indians  for  two  or  three 
centuries,  they  had  to  us  a  character  partly  legendary,  misty, 
and  fabulous.  We  conceived  of  them  as  in  numbers  wholly 
undefined,  though  in  great  hordes,  inhabiting  or  roaming 
over  vast,  unexplored  spaces  between  us  and  the  setting 
sun,  and  supposed  that  we  might  at  any  time  draw  a  line 
in  our  territory  which  should  divide  between  them  and  the 
farthest  settlements  which  the  whites  for  long  periods  to 
come  would  be  likely  to  plant  in  the  wilderness.  And  we 
had  thought  that  we  might  easily  make  treaty  arrangements 
with  those  nearest  to  us,  —  the  farthermost  tribes  being 
of  no  account,  —  by  which  the  peace  might  be  kept,  the 
military  power  being  always  in  reserve.  Now  all  this 


PROXIMITY   OF  THE   INDIANS.  555 

vagueness  and  mist  about  the  Indians  have  been  dispelled. 
We  know  their  numbers  almost  as  accurately  as  we  do  the 
population  of  one  of  our  oldest  towns.  Classified  statistics 
of  the  tribes,  in  count  and  in  condition,  are  spread  upon 
documentary  records  in  Washington  ,  and  we  find,  to  our 
satisfaction,  though  the  former  exaggerated  conceit  of  the 
vast  number  of  their  hordes  may  not  have  shrunken  so 
rapidly  as  did  the  estimate  of  Falstaff's  men  in  buckram, 
yet  that  there  are  by  no  means  so  many  wild  Indians  in 
our  domain  as  we  had  imagined.  They  are  now  circum- 
scribed too,  all  around,  by  the  regions  of  civilization  in  its 
various  stages,  —  rude,  or  in  the  way  of  advance.  There 
is  no  longer  an* unexplored  and  unlimited  realm  of  mysteri- 
ous fringes  and  depth,  to  which  they  may  wander  as  the 
white  man  pushes  them  farther  to  the  horizon  ;  for  the 
whites  occupy  that  horizon. 

2.  And  this  suggests  another  advance  in  relieving  the 
Indian  question  of  what  was  till  very  recently  one  of  its 
most  perplexing  and  embarrassing  conditions.  We  have 
found  that  it  is  utterly  impossible  to  keep  the  Indians  from 
contact  and  intercourse  with  the  whites :  push  them  back 
as  far  as  we  please,  they  are  still  our  neighbors.  Once  it. 
was  the  opinion  of  our  wisest  statesmen  that  the  prime 
condition  for  just  and  peaceful  relations  with  the  Indians 
was  to  divide  our  territory  with  them,  and  leave  them  to 
themselves.  We  cannot  do  that  now.  The  Indians  them- 
selves have  had  so  much  to  do  with  the  whites,  and  in  spite 
of  all  our  fights  with  them  have  received  such  benefits 
from  us,  that  they  desire  more.  In  fact  they  cannot  now 
exist  without  the  presence  and  the  help  of  the  whites. 
Their  range  over  the  former  wild  reaches  of  territory  for 
hunting  has  been  steadily  reduced,  and  the  game  has  be- 
come scarce,  in  many  vast  spaces  extinct.  So  they  abso- 
lutely need  our  best  improved  weapons,  our  goods  and 
implements ;  and  whole  tribes  of  .them  are  now  kept  from 
actual  starvation  only  by  the  supplies  which  Government 


556  MILITARY  AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

furnishes.  Then,  too,  within  all  the  regions  most  solemnly 
covenanted  to  them  as  reservations  on  which  the  whites 
were  forbidden  to  intrude,  the  moment  the  rumor  gets 
abroad  that  there  are  mines  upon  them  the  explorers,  the 
miners,  and  the  farmers  are  found  to  have  raised  their 
shanties  and  then  their  so-called  cities.  These  facts  settle 
the  point  that  all  our  future  relations  with  the  Indian  tribes, 
instead  of  starting  from  non-intercourse  with  them,  must 
proceed  upon  a  rapidly  advancing  intimacy,  —  of  depen- 
dence on  their  part,  and  of  generous  help  on  ours.  This 
is  a  fact  which  we  shall  find  by  and  by  to  have  essentially 
modified  the  old  Indian  question. 

3.  A  third  facility  for  wisely  and  effectively  dealing  with 
that  question  is  found  in  the  fact  that  our  Government  has, 
though  only  so  recently,  given  up  the  foolish  fancy  that 
the  Indian  tribes  are  independent  and  sovereign  nations. 
We  have  adopted  them  as  wards, —  a  very  interesting  and 
a  very  troublesome  class  of  dependents, —  with  quite  a  pre- 
carious and  unappraised  inheritance  claimed  by  them  as 
invested  in  our  keeping,  and  likely  to  cost  us  in  the  end  a 
great  deal  more  of  our  funds  than  of  their  own.  But  this 
change  of  their  status  from  a  rude  independency  to  an 
extreme  dependency  has  given  us  rights  in  the  case  which, 
though  we  may  have  usurped,  we  did  not  in  terms  claim, 
but  really  renounced,  before.  We  have  now  the  rights  of 
guardianship:  we  may  intermeddle  with  the  internal  af- 
fairs of  the  Indians,  with  their  relations  to  each  other ;  we 
may  restrain  them,  bring  them  under  a  strict  and  firm  con- 
trol, dictate  to  them  terms  and  conditions.  It  must  now 
be  with  our  Government  a  perfectly  open  and  free  ques- 
tion ;  our  own  decision  of  it  being  absolute,  how  shall  our 
authority  over  the  Indians  be  exercised  ? 

This  is  at  present  the  aspect  and  import  of  the  Indian 
question.  Our  Government  —  giving  over  all  faltering, 
hesitancy,  and  inconstancy  of  method  —  has,  first  of  all,  to 
recognize  the  fact  that  it  has  this  great  question  to  deal 


PRESENT   EMBARRASSMENTS.  557 

with,  positively,  effectively,  and  decidedly, — arbitrarily  if 
so  its  wisdom  dictates,  but  with  the  best  lights  of  expedi- 
ency, policy,  and  humanity.  We  have  had  enough  of  a 
fretting  and  an  aimless  experimenting  continued  through 
a  century.  All  the  conditions  of  the  case  now  prompt  to 
decisive  action ;  for  we  have  passed  the  stages  of  experi- 
ment. A  wise  Government  in  these  days  cannot  be  satis- 
fied with  either  alternative  in  treating  an  uncivilized  race 
on  its  frontiers,  numbering  less  than  one  in  one  hundred 
and  fifty  of  its  white  population,  —  as  a  fighting  enemy  or 
a  hungry  corps  of  paupers.  Government  has  the  power 
and  the  means  to  deal  absolutely  with  the  subject,  and  it 
now  feels  that  it  is  under  the  obligation  to  dispose  of  it. 
And  the  possession  of  power  by  those  to  whom  it  rightfully 
belongs  will  always  prompt  magnanimity,  in  its  exercise. 
We  no  longer  dread  the  Indians  with  the  dismay  which  our 
ancestors  felt  about  them,  as  near  or  distant.  Their  re- 
duced and  humbled  condition  demands  of  us  forbearance, 
mercy,  and  even  lavish  benevolence. 

Let  us  next  look  at  the   actual  situation,  with  a  view 
especially  to  its  chief  embarrassments. 

1.  We  have  shut  ourselves,  our  citizens,  out  of   large 
portions  of  several  of  our  States  and  Territories,  and  of 
vast  regions  of  our  wild  domain,  which  we  have  covenanted 
to  Indian  tribes  "  forever ;"  to  Indian  tribes,  with  an  agree- 
ment to  exclude  the  whites  or  to  punish  trespassers.    Many 
of  these  reservations  are  encompassed  by  free  territory  and 
by  stages  of  civilization.     But  both  our  Government  and 
our  citizens  wish  to  enter,  to  traverse,  and  to  occupy  these 
cordoned  regions ;  and  we  fret  under  our  self-exclusion  when 
railroad  projects,  mines,  or  emigration  tempt  us. 

2.  While  we  have  shut  ourselves  out  from,  we  have  not 
really  shut  the  Indians  within,  these  reservations.    We  have 
assented  in  some  cases  to  allow  conditional  roamings  out- 
side of  them,  for  the  chase  and  for  hunting ;  and  we  cannot 
in  other  cases  restrain  the  Indians  from  this  roaming  be- 


558  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

yond  their  bounds,  —  the  most  stirring  cause  of  border 
strife,  raids,  pillaging,  and  butchering  on  our  frontiers. 
Portions  of  even  peaceful  treaty  tribes  indulge  this  pro- 
pensity on  the  plea  of  poverty  and  threatened  starvation. 
For  when  we  covenanted  to  each  tribe  its  special  reserva- 
tion, so  generous  in  its  extent,  it  was  with  the  expectation 
that  the  tribe  would  live  on  its  resources,  after  its  own  way 
of  life.  Circumstances  have  made  such  subsistence  impos- 
sible ;  so  that  the  reservation  has  become  an  artificial  an- 
noyance and  obstruction  to  the  white  man,  and  an  insuffi- 
cient provision  and  a  galling  restraint  to  the  red  man. 

3.  Our  Government,  as  a  trustee,  holds  large  amounts  of 
funds  invested  in  its  securities,  on  which  it  is  held  by  old 
treaties  to  pay  perpetual  dividends  to  the  Indians.     It  is 
also  pledged  to  pay,  for  various  terms  of  years,  annuities 
of  money  and  supplies  to  several  tribes,  with  no  funded 
capital  or  principal.     The  annual  payment  of  these  obli- 
gations, either  in  money  or  goods,  requires  a  complicated 
system  of  agents,  contractors,  advertising,  inspectors,  and 
freight   carriers,   from   which   it   has   been   impossible   to 
exclude   gigantic   and   petty  fraud,   corrupting  the  whole 
service,  and  causing  wrongs  to  and  complaints  from  the 
Indians.     We  thus  pauperize  the  Indians,  make  it  more 
difficult  to  engage  them  in  self-support  and  industry ;  and 
we  have  also  made  bad  bargains,  as  by  giving  away  pur- 
chased land  to  railroad  companies,  and  to  settlers  for  home- 
steads, at  less  than  cost,  we  are  annually  increasing  our 
Indian  debt  and  losing  our  money. 

4.  These  Indian  reservations,  scattered  over  our  domain, 
are  for  the  most  part  exempted  from  general  and  local 
jurisdiction  by  law ;  and,  if  we  take  cognizance  of  offences 
in  them,  it  must  be  by  arbitrary  and  inconstant  methods, 
confusion  again  coming  in  through  the  conflict  between 
State  or  Territorial  and  the  General  Government.     Thus, 
in  effect,  we  have  licensed  lawless  communities,  with  rights 
of  immunity  and  the  risks  of  a  Pandemonium. 


THE   INDIAN    BUREAU.  559 

From  the  formation  of  the  Government,  as  we  have 
seen,  our  relations  with  the  Indians  were  recognized  as  of 
sufficient  importance  to  engage  distinct  legislation  and 
attention,  but  not,  however,  for  requiring  administration 
by  a  separate  department.  This  administration  was  com- 
mitted to  the  charge  of  the  Secretary  of  War.  A  small 
number  of  superintendents  and  agents,  resident  among  the 
Indians  or  providing  the  supplies  for  them,  reported  to  the 
Secretary,  though  they  were  not  appointed  by  him.  These 
officials  were  military  men  and  civilians ;  the  latter  being 
a  majority.  The  Act  of  Congress  of  1834  so  far  modified 
this  arrangement  as  to  give  to  the  Secretary  of  War  the 
supervision  and  direction  of  these  superintendents  and 
agents,  the  majority  of  whom  were  still  civilians.  In 
1849  this  Indian  Bureau,  so  called,  was,  by  Act  of  Con^ 
gress,  taken  from  the  charge  of  the  War  Department  and 
incorporated  as  a  Bureau  for  Indians  into  the  new  Depart- 
ment of  the  Interior  then  created.  In  July,  1867,  Congress 
devised  a  body  of  Peace  Commissioners,  composed  of  eight 
members,  —  half  of  them  military  officers,  half  civilians ; 
they  were  to  make  an  annual  report  to  the  President. 
Three  special  objects  denned  the  province  of  this  Com- 
mission,—  to  remove  the  causes  of  war ;  to  secure  the  fron- 
tier settlements,  and  the  safe  working  of  the  Pacific 
railroads ;  and  to  suggest  a  plan  for  reclaiming  and  civil- 
izing the  Indians.  Their  measures  were  to  be  all  peaceful, 
if  possible ;  but  under  certain  contingencies  the  President 
was  authorized  to  supplement  or  reinforce  their  measures 
by  calling  out  four  mounted  regiments  to  conquer  peace. 

The  first  difficulty  which  the  Commission  encountered  at 
the  start  was,  to  secure  interviews  with  chiefs  and  warriors 
of  hostile  tribes  roaming  over  vast  regions  of  wilderness, 
parts  of  which  even  the  trappers  had  not  penetrated,  while 
small  war  parties  from  these  tribes  were  depredating  on  the 
frontiers,  killing  white  men,  capturing  women  and  children, 
raiding  on  railroad  workmen,  —  often  by  concert,  on  the 


560  MILITARY   AND    PEACE   POLICY. 

same  day,  at  points  hundreds  of  miles  distant,  —  interrupt- 
ing mail-coaches,  burning  stations,  destroying  crops,  fences, 
barns,  and  houses,  driving  off  cattle,  and  murdering  and 
scalping  lonely  travellers  in  the  woods.  All  transit  through 
the  regions  to  be  visited  by  the  Peace  Commissioners  was 
perilous.  Their  dilemma  was,  that  if  they  went  without  a 
military  escort  they  would  be  slaughtered,  while  such  an 
escort  might  thwart  their  peaceful  errand.  Fortunately 
they  had  authority  to  call  for  help  on  the  commanders  of 
posts,  and  on  the  superintendents  and  agents  resident 
among  the  reservations  under  the  Civil  Commissioner. 
They  had  the  security  also  —  one  much  respected  by  Ind- 
ians—  of  an  armed  steamer  for  carrying  supplies.  The 
Commission  contrived  to  obtain  some  limited  councils  with 
the  savages.  They  were  smarting  under  the  breach  of  our 
treaty  covenants  with  them,  and  alleged  that  they  were 
starving  because  of  the  scarcity  of  game  and  the  withhold- 
ing from  them  of  the  promised  arms  and  ammunition. 
This  first  essay  in  the  policy  of  attempting  "  to  conquer  by 
kindness"  ended  by  a  free  distribution  among  the  savages 
of  the  coveted  arms  and  ammunition  ;  with  which  those 
who  regard  with  disgust  and  contempt  this  "  Quaker " 
policy  charge  that  the  Indians  at  once  equipped  themselves 
afresh  for  their  wild  ravages  on  the  frontiers. 

The  Peace  Commissioners,  at  a  meeting  in  Chicago  in 
1868,  adopted  a  resolve  advising  Congress  to  restore  the 
Indian  Bureau  to  the  War  Department.  This  was  directly 
in  opposition  to  their  judgment  the  year  before.  Thus  has 
been  opened  the  controversy,  still  so  vigorously  working, 
between  philanthropy  and  war  policy,  —  though  by  no 
means  dividing  all  philanthropists  or  all  military  officers 
to  either  side  upon  it,  —  as  to  which  of  the  two  methods 
will  be  the  more  effective,  or  even  the  more  humane. 

With  the  purpose  of  possessing  myself  with  all  the 
means,  in  facts  and  arguments  and  tests  of  experiment  for 
forming  an  instructed  and  candid  opinion  upon  the  main 


STRICTURES  ON  THE  WAR  POLICY.  561 

points  involved  in  this  controversy,  I  have  labored  through 
the  perusal  of  every  volume,  public  document,  report,  and 
plea  that  I  could  bring  within  my  reach  upon  either  side 
of  it.  Had  I  stopped  midway  in  that  laborious  process,  I 
should  probably  have  been  more  disposed  than  I  am  now  to 
pronounce  decided  judgments  and  opinions  concerning  it ;  as 
I  have  noticed  that  many  persons  do,  as  the  results  of  some- 
thing less  than  a  full  survey  of  all  the  perplexities,  the 
intricacies,  and  the  inconsistent  representations  which  griev- 
ously complicate  the  discussion.  Nor  is  it  only  because  the 
authorities  to  which  one  would  be  likely  to  defer  are  often 
strongly  prejudiced  and  partisan  in  spirit ;  very  often  the 
essential  facts  in  an  important  point  or  stage  of  an  inquiry 
are  as  positively  denied  by  one  party  as  they  are  asserted 
by  another.  The  leading  principle  of -most  service  to  an 
unbiassed  and  impartial  inquirer  is  that  which  was  set 
down  in  an  early  page  of  this  volume,  —  that  those  who 
for  different  ends  and  purposes  of  their  own  have  been 
brought  into  different  relations  with  the  Indians  see  them 
with  very  different  eyes,  and  report  and  present  them  very 
differently. 

In  endeavoring  to  reach  a  perfectly  candid  and  impartial 
view  of  the  issue  so  warmly  contested  between  the  respec- 
tive advocates  of  the  policy  of  conducting  the  business  of 
our  Government,  in  its  charge  of  the  Indians,  by  the  War 
Department  or  by  a  Peace  Commission,  we  have  to  con- 
sider both  the  arguments  and  pleas  advanced  on  either 
side,  and  the  results  of  actual  experiment.  The  War  De- 
partment having  had  the  charge  of  the  Indian  Bureau,  the 
reasons  which  led  to  the  transfer  of  its  administration  to 
the  Department  of  the  Interior  may  be  stated  as,  in  sub- 
stance, the  following :  Our  small  national  army  has  enough 
to  do  within  its  own  special  province,  without  being  bur- 
dened with  the  charge  of  such  responsible  and  complicated 
business  as  is  found  to  be  involved  in  our  relations  with 
the  Indians.  Neither  the  officers  nor  the  men  have  special 

36 


562  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

qualifications  for  that  business.  Experience  has  proved 
that  our  army  would  need  to  be  largely  increased  for  any 
efficient  management  of  Indian  affairs ;  and  this  provision 
of  a  large  standing  army  would  be  costly,  and  on  many 
accounts  highly  objectionable.  The  war  policy  has  been 
found  vastly  more  costly  and  far  less  satisfactory  than  the 
peace  policy,  though  the  latter  has  been  so  far  very  burden- 
some and  chargeable. 

It  was  further  urged  that  the  tendency  of  the  war  policy 
is  to  perpetuate  hostilities  with  the  Indians,  and  the  mili- 
tary management  has  always  proved  a  failure.  The  killing 
of  each  single  Indian  has  caused  the  sacrifice  of  twenty-five 
white  men.  The  war  with  a  few  hundreds  of  Florida  Ind- 
ians, running  through  seven  years,  cost  us  the  lives  of  one 
thousand  five  hundred  of  our  soldiers  and  thirty  millions 
of  money.  The  method  is  inhuman  and  unchristian,  as  it 
aims  to  demoralize  and  destroy  the  whole  Indian  race,  and 
is  utterly  inconsistent  with  all  the  objects  and  ends  which 
a  wise  and  just  judgment  should  aim  to  pursue.  The 
presence  of  military  forces  among  the  Indians  always  ex- 
asperates them,  and  sets  them  alike  on  the  defensive  and 
the  offensive.  The  influence  of  a  camp  of  soldiers,  with 
stragglers  and  groups  of  natives  hanging  around  it,  is 
abominably  corrupting,  attended  as  it  is  with  all  forms  of 
demoralization,  drunkenness,  and  licentiousness,  infecting 
the  Indians  with  the  worst  vices  and  diseases  of  civiliza- 
tion. If  we  look  to  the  military  and  to  war  measures  in 
our  future  relations  either  with  the  semi-civilized,  the  sub- 
jugated, or  the  still  wild  tribes,  we  shall  well-nigh  bankrupt 
our  treasury  and  commit  ourselves  to  an  endless  series  of 
fights.  Such  are  the  chief  arguments  which,  when  fol- 
lowed into  details  and  specifications,  presented  most  for- 
midable objections  to  the  exclusive  management  of  the 
Indians  by  the  war  policy. 

In  thus  setting  down  in  plain  and  strong  statements  the 
objections  which  have  found  expression  to  a  main  reliance 


FAULTS   OF  THE   PEACE   COMMISSION.  563 

upon  a  military  policy  in  the  management  of  the  Indians, 
simple  fairness  demands  the  suggestion  here  of  a  qualify- 
ing remark.  In  some  quarters  unmeasured  severity  of 
criticism,  even  abuse  and  contempt,  have  been  visited  not 
only  upon  our  Government  war  policy,  but  upon  the  offi- 
cers, the  men,  and  the  conduct  of  our  army  in  its  military 
operations.  This  is  alike  cruelly  unjust  and  ungrateful. 
The  army  is  the  agent  and  servant  of  our  Government ;  it 
acts  under  orders.  It  has  performed  arduous  and  heroic 
service,  under  stern  and  fearfully  exacting  and  most  peril- 
ous conditions,  enduring  every  form  of  hardship,  privation, 
and  extremity.  It  has  numbered  among  its  officers  men 
with  the  breeding,  training,  and  spirit  of  gentlemen,  with 
humane  and  Christian  hearts  ;  often  acting  under  the  stern 
compulsion  of  duty,  against  their  own  inclinations  and 
convictions.  They  have  maintained  discipline  over  men 
otherwise  untractable,  have  led  them  courageously  through 
ambushes  and  massacres,  and  have  held  them  in  check 
when  restraint  was  necessary.  The  army  has  been  the 
pioneer  and  security  for  the  advance  of  civilization.  Not 
a  railroad  could  now  traverse  the  old  American  Desert,  not 
even  a  wagon-road,  a  mail-route,  nor  a  safe  foot-trail,  with- 
out the  convoy  of  that  army.  The  occasion  for  dispensing 
with  military  methods  in  the  management  of  the  Indians 
is  well  defined  in  the  future.  It  will  come  when  the  Ind- 
ians cease  to  be  fighters. 

Supposing  now  that  all  the  arguments  and  results  of  trial 
and  experiments  adduced  against  the  war  policy  justified 
the  initiation  of  the  Peace  Commission  under  the  Depart- 
ment of  the  Interior,  we  listen  to  what  is  to  be  urged 
against  this  substituted  policy  and  its  workings.  The  pres- 
ent Indian  Bureau,  while  charging  that  the  war  manage- 
ment was  and  always  must  be  a  failure,  admits  that  its  own 
has  by  no  means  been  wholly  successful.  If  we  try,  for 
the  sake  of  impartiality,  to  stand  free  of  championship  of 
either  party,  we  have  to  remind  ourselves  that  the  peace 


564  MILITARY   AND    PEACE   POLICE. 

policy  has  not  been  set  in  such  complete  administrative 
authority  as  to  have  the  ultimate  disposal,  in  ways  consist- 
ent with  its  own  principles,  of  all  the  cases  and  causes  of 
trouble  with  the  Indians.  A  gap  was  left,  with  an  unde- 
fined range  of  authority  and  responsibility,  between  the 
Indian  Bureau  and  the  War  Department.  The  Bureau  was 
not  sternly  restricted  to  peaceful  measures  by  being  told 
that  the  Indians  were  henceforward  under  its  sole  charge, 
whether  they  proved  troublesome  or  manageable,  and  that 
no  recourse  should  for  the  future  be  had  to  military  force. 
On  the  contrary,  it  was  expressly  provided  that  the  military 
should  under  some  conditions  be  available  and  put  to  ser- 
vice when  the  Indian  Bureau,  baffled  in  its  efforts,  should 
fall  back  upon  it. 

And  so  it  is  pleaded  that  the  Indian  Bureau  has  in  effect 
been  a  mere  clerkship,  alike  while  it  was  under  the  Depart- 
ment of  War  and  since  it  has  been  under  that  of  the  Inte- 
rior ;  that  it  has  been  subject  to  a  superior,  to  whom  it  was 
bound  to  report  and  to  look  for  its  limited  and  cramped 
powers ;  and  that  for  a  full  and  fair  trial  it  ought  to  have 
been  an  independent  department. 

While  the  friends  of  the  peace  policy  allow  that  it  has 
proved  a  partial  failure,  its  most  decided  opponents  insist 
that  it  has  proved  a  complete  failure ;  that  its  agency  has 
been  mischievous  and  calamitous,  vitiated  by  corruptions, 
frauds,  mismanagement,  wasteful  outlays  and  reckless  ex- 
travagance on  the  part  of  greedy  and  profligate  subordi- 
nates, contractors,  expressmen,  and  distributors ;  that  it 
has  aggravated  all  our  controversies  with  the  Indians,  pau- 
perized them,  and  made  them  mercenary  and  treacherous, 
while  furnishing  them  with  arms  and  supplies  to  be  used 
against  us ;  and  finally,  that  the  blundering  and  discomfit- 
ures of  the  peace  policy  have  ended  in  making  it  neces- 
sary to  call  in  the  help  of  the  army,  and  that  too  at  a  great 
disadvantage  arising  from  the  presumption  that  it  was  to 
be  dispensed  with,  and  the  suspension  of  its  discipline  and 
activity,  and  its  real  humiliation. 


FAULTS   OP  THE  PEACE   COMMISSION.  565 

This  formidable  list  of  allegations  against  the  peace  pol- 
icy does  not  lack  definiteness  in  its  specifications  or  proofs. 
That  policy  is  based  upon  the  generous  if  not  lavish  dis- 
tribution of  supplies,  clothing,  cattle,  rations,  and  money  to 
vast  hordes  of  worthless  paupers,  who,  if  they  cannot  hunt, 
will  do  nothing  but  laze  about  and  steal,  the  whole  expense 
being  a  burden  on  the  industry  and  toil  of  our  own  hard- 
working people  ;  and  this  too,  while  we  are  warned  by  the 
complaints  of  the  poor  and  the  unemployed  in  our  most 
thriving  communities  not  to  assume  such  a  huge  responsi- 
bility. Again,  the  furnishing  of  these  supplies  tempts  a 
vast  number  of  cunning,  greedy,  and  fraudulent  contract- 
ors, hucksters,  middle-men,  and  rascals  of  every  grade  and 
hue,  to  practise  all  sorts  of  frauds  both  on  the  Government 
and  on  the  Indians.  .  Honest  and  high-principled  men  in 
authority  use  all  their  wisdom,  sagacity,  and  keenness  to 
prevent  these  enormous  and  outrageous  frauds,  and  occa- 
sionally a  culprit  is  detected,  though  escaping  without  being 
deprived  of  his  gains  or  punished  except  by  loss  of  office. 
Still,  there  is  such  opportunity,  such  facility,  such  mighty 
temptation  for  practising  and  covering  up  these  frauds  and 
evading  justice,  that  it  is  generally  allowed  that  abuse  is 
incident  to  and  inherent  in  the  system  itself. 

The  pensioned  and  pauperized  savages,  it  is  further 
urged,  become  greedily  dependent  on  these  Government 
supplies.  If  they  are  withheld,  or  delayed,  or  the  frauds  in 
them  make  them  worthless,  the  savages  are  furnished  with 
a  good  plea  justifying  them  in  an  outbreak,  a  pillaging  ex- 
pedition, a  murderous  raid,— the  wily  old  chiefs  on  visiting 
terms  at  the  agencies,  alleging  that  they  cannot  restrain 
their  young  men  from  such  outbursts  and  expeditions.  On 
the  plea  of  the  scarcity  of  game  and  the  inefficiency  of  their 
native  weapons,  the  best  modern  arms  and  ammunition  are 
furnished  them  by  our  Government.  Over  and  over  again 
has  it  been  affirmed  by  our  most  honored  army  officers,  that 
these  arms  have  been  almost  immediately  turned  against 


566  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

the  whites  in  border  raids  or  battles.  On  the  whole,  men 
who  have  hud  large  converse  with  the  Indians,  and  who  al- 
low themselves  to  speak  freely  as  they  feel,  denounce  in 
plain  terms  this  peace  policy,  as  simply  a  mewling,  canting 
philanthropy,  by  which  kind-hearted  civilians  are  beguiled, 
which  the  Indians  mock  and  laugh  at,  and  which  must  be 
wholly  discredited  and  at  once  abandoned  for  stern  and  res- 
olute measures  of  force.  Of  course  these  largesses,  doles, 
and  supplies  given  to  the  Indians  as  annuitants  or  paupers 
would  be  distributed  as  pledged  to  them  if  the  War  Depart- 
ment had  them  fully  in  charge.  But  it  is  urged  that  the 
peace  policy  carries  this,  in  itself  objectionable  waste  of 
supplies,  beyond  all  reasonable  bounds,  and  is  inaugurating 
a  system  which  will  too  heavily  burden  the  industry  and 
thrift  of  the  country.  The  economy  of  the  peace  policy 
should  be  devoted  to  making  the  Indians  wholly  self-depen- 
dent. 

There  are  many  intensely  earnest  and  complicated  con- 
troversies in  active  agitation  among  men,  especially  on 
political  and  social  issues,  in  which  the  humblest  and  some 
of  the  wisest  of  us  are  helped  to  form  our  own  opinion  sim- 
ply by  trying  to  learn  on  which  side  are  to  be  found,  pre- 
vailingly, those  whom  we  call  the  wise  and  the  good,  the 
fair-minded,  the  single-hearted,  the  unselfish,  the  calm, 
discreet,  and  dispassionate.  The  test  fails  us  in  trying  so 
to  dispose  of  the  war  policy  and  the  peace  policy  issue  in 
dealing  with  the  Indians.  Those  who  claim  our  attention  as 
experts  on  this  great  issue  are  not  to  be  morally  classified 
according  as  they  stand  for  the  one  or  the  other  side  in  the 
controversy.  We  find  the  extreme  views  on  this  intricate 
question  advanced  and  maintained  by  those  as  to  whose 
characters,  intelligence,  and  humanity  we  can  draw  no  line 
of  division  or  preference.  It  may  therefore  be  allowed  to 
some  of  us,  at  least,  to  choose  a  medium  or  reconciling 
method,  and  to  approve  a  combination  of  some  elements  of 
both  policies.  Our  aim  shall  be  benevolent,  practically 


CONFLICTING   CHARGES.  567 

wise,  efficient,  and  hopeful  of  every  end  of  peace  and  jus- 
tice. But  it  shall  be  resolutely  and  forcibly  insisted  on 
and  advanced,  so  as  to  allow  of  that  element  of  a  war  policy 
(which  we  may  admit  is  coercion),  compulsion.  If  under 
some  circumstances  we  may  rightfully  use  the  forces  of 
war,  we  certainly  may  put  to  service  the  constraining  forces 
of  peace. 

We  have  had  in  quite  recent  years  a  series  of  frightful 
and  awful  catastrophes  in  our  Indian  warfare  which  we 
call  massacres,  that  word  being  appropriated  to  acts  of  sav- 
age cruelty  perpetrated  by  the  red  men.  Try  to  probe  to 
the  bottom  the  truth,  as  to  cause,  occasion,  provocation, 
responsibility,  in  any  one  of  those  appalling  feats  of  des- 
peration. Take  the  relations  of  frontier  settlers,  of  rail- 
road working  parties,  of  miners,  of  emigrants  in  transitu, 
of  the  occupants  of  army  posts,  of  military  officers,  and  of 
investigating  committees  at  Washington.  And  remember 
that  the  Indian  side  of  the  story  is  seldom  reported  to  us ; 
and  when  it  is,  is  apt  to  come  in  different  and  disputed  ver- 
sions. The  variance  between  the  accounts  which  we  re- 
ceive of  these  aggressions  of  the  Indians  reaches  even  to  the 
extent  of  referring  them  in  their  occasion  or  impulse  to  the 
wanton  provocation  of  the  military  officers  on  the  one  hand, 
and  on  the  other  to  the  folly  or  mismanagement  of  the 
peace  policy.  An  impartial  investigator  of  the  facts  in  any 
such  case  might  be  disposed  to  decide  that  any  excess  of 
force  which  was  employed  by  the  armed  party  might  have 
been  put  to  good  use  as  energy,  compulsion,  and  coercion 
on  the  side  of  philanthropy. 

The  basis  of  the  actual  relation  of  our  Government  to  the 
Indians  we  find  to  be  that  of  full,  even  arbitrary,  power  to 
dictate  a  policy,  to  choose  and  impose  the  terms  by  which 
we  will  henceforward  deal  with  them.  It  is  well  for  us  to 
start  with  this  conscious  possession  of  power,  for  with  it 
goes  as  full  responsibility  in  its  exercise.  And  how  shall 
we  use  it  ?  We  have  a  full  —  and  if  not  an  unquestioned, 


568  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

still  an  irresistible  —  freedom  to  assume  towards  the  Ind- 
ians the  place  and  prerogatives  of  absolute  superiority  and 
authority.  We  have,  then,  to  set  before  us  an  aim  or  ob- 
ject, which,  in  view  of  all  known  facts,  we  can  adopt  as 
possible  and  practicable,  and  follow  up  steadily  and  con- 
sistently till  we  realize  it.  And  what  shall  it  be  ?  As 
answered  by  living  and  plain-spoken  men  of  our  own  gene- 
ration, as  by  those  of  previous  generations  all  the  way  back 
to  the  settlement  of  the  country,  —  though  with  more  em- 
phasis to-day, — this  question  is  met  by  an  alternative.  One 
answer  is,  The  Indians  must  be  exterminated,  root  and 
branch ;  the  country  must  be  rid  of  them.  The  other  an- 
swer is,  The  Indians  must  be  reclaimed,  civilized,  educated, 
brought  to  the  full  status  of  white  men  as  self-supporting, 
industrious,  independent  citizens. 

Of  course,  most  persons  start  with  a  shock  of  horror  at 
the  bare  suggestion  of  the  alternative,  that  our  Government, 
directly  or  by  any  covert  purpose  and  action,  should  con- 
template the  extermination  of  the  Indians.  They  would 
say  that  the  very  mention  of  it  is  abominable,  as  of  a.  bar- 
barous and  inhuman  outrage,  diabolical  even  in  its  enor- 
mity. Humanity,  the  law  of  Nature,  if  not  of  nations, 
protests  against  it.  In  this  last  sentence,  as  worded,  I 
have  allowed  the  if,  —  as  to  whether  the  law  of  nations,  so 
called,  would  positively  bar  the  alternative  of  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  Indians.  And  I  have  recognized  that  dubiousness 
in  view  of  the  known  fact  that  there  are  some  among  us  who 
insist  that,  by  the  laws  or  principles  which  regulate  national 
life, —  the  interests  of  government  for  a  great  homogeneous 
people,  —  the  extermination  of  an  alien  race  is  an  alterna- 
tive that  may  be  admitted  into  a  perfectly  comprehensive 
view.  In  fact,  this  way  of  disposing  of  the  Indian  question 
has  found  among  us  some  outspoken  advocates,  and  it  lias 
doubtless  many  on  its  side  who  entertain  it  with  misgivings 
as  more  than  probable.  The  outspoken  sympathizers  with 
this  plan  of  extinguishing  the  Indians  are  found  to  express 


:   WASTED   BENEVOLENCE.  569 

their  view  as  a  stout  and  resolute  conviction,  after  a  long 
and  thorough  acquaintance  with  the  whole  subject,  and  a 
sharp  scrutiny  of  the  tendency  and  inevitable  result  of  all 
existing  influences.  Very  many  military  men  most  skilled 
in  the  nature  and  habits  of  the  Indians,  and  best  acquainted 
with  the  probabilities  of  the  future  for  them,  have  boldly 
spoken  the  word,  The  fate  of  the  Indian  race  is  extermina- 
tion, or  at  least  extinction.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the 
brief  sentence  of  one  of  our  foremost  generals,  "  The  only 
good  Indian  is  a  dead  Indian."  We  are  at  liberty,  how- 
ever, to  put  a  gloss  upon  the  sentence,  as  meaning  that  the 
Indian  quality  must  be  killed  out  of  a  savage  before  he  can 
be  called  "  good."  Besides  those  who  so  startlingly  but 
frankly  avow  this  stern  and  dire  conclusion,  there  are  many 
more  who  hold  it  as  a  secret  persuasion  of  what  is  inevi- 
table. Though  such  persons  may  really  prefer  and  plead 
for  the  gentle,  forbearing,  fostering  efforts  of  a  peace  policy, 
they  all  the  while  have  a  misgiving,  or  inner  assurance,  that 
it  will  be  vain ;  that  the  Indian,  as  he  cannot  be  humanized 
and  civilized,  must  yield  to  extinction  of  race.  The  reasons 
offered  for  this  hopeless  view  of  the  fate  of  the  Indian  have 
been  recognized  in  another  connection.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  discuss  it  or  to  argue  about  it.  Yet  reference  may 
here  be  made  incidentally  to  one  element  which  would  come 
into  a  full  discussion.  One  of  the  reasons  offered  for  the 
hopeless  inefficiency  of  the  peace  policy  is  the  enormous  ex- 
pense, already  felt  as  a  burden  to  the  nation,  of  supporting 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  Indians  as  paupers  of  the  most 
abject  and  profitless  sort,  and  who  are  not  likely  to  be  any- 
thing other  than  paupers,  steadily  deteriorating  and  becom- 
ing more  clamorous,  lazy,  drunken,  and  dangerous.  The 
nation,  it  is  said,  is  becoming  weary  of  this  waste,  with  its 
complicated  system  of  agents,  superintendents,  guardians, 
teachers,  and  fraudulent  traders,  and  with  an  ultimate  ne- 
cessity of  calling  in  the  military  when  the  philanthropist 
and  missionary  are  baffled.  Now,  as  to  this  matter  of  ex- 


570  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

pense  for  a  war  policy  or  a  peace  policy,  we  may  as  well 
have  in  view  the  cost  of  the  former.  Competent  persons 
certify  us,  and  past  experience  warrants  them,  that  military 
operations  against  the  Indians  cost  ten  times  more  than  a 
peace  policy.  And  the  estimate  has  been  fairly  made,  that 
the  extermination  of  the  Indians  by  warfare  would  tax  this 
nation  more  heavily  in  money  and  in  the  lives  of  white  men 
than  did  the  war  of  the  Secession.  The  common  impres- 
sion among  those  who  have  not  informed  themselves  on  the 
subject  is,  that  in  the  two  and  a  half  centuries  of  the  hostili- 
ties between  the  white  man  and  the  red  man  here,  the  num- 
ber of  the  Indians  killed  has  been  in  excess  of  the  whites. 
This  is  wide  of  the  truth.  The  lowest  estimate  1  have  ever 
found  among  experts  is,  that  ten  white  men  have  fallen  for 
each  single  Indian :  some  have  even  put  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  instead  of  ten. 

The  money  cost  of  our  Government  wars  with  the  Ind- 
ians is  doubtless  set  within  bounds,  when  it  is  estimated  at 
five  hundred  million  dollars.  In  the  first  ten  years  after 
our  Independence,  a  million  a  year  had  been  expended  in 
expeditions  and  commissions.  The  Seminole  war  cost 
twenty-five  millions.  The  Cheyenne  war,  thirty  millions. 
The  bills  for  the  Sioux  war  are  not  yet  all  paid,  as  it  is  still 
only  in  a  state  of  truce.  Indeed,  the  sum  of  thirty  millions 
of  dollars  was  probably  exceeded  in  the  Seminole  war, 
which,  though  fought  against  only  two  or  three  thousand 
savages,  was  protracted  through  seven  years,  and  engaged 
a  force  of  fifty  thousand  of  our  soldiers.  Some  of  the  cost 
for  opening  military  roads  and  maintaining  forts  and  sta- 
tions of  course  accrues  to  the  benefit  of  civilized  uses,  and 
we  are  to  regard  the  outlay  as  well  spent  in  bringing  terri- 
tory under  our  knowledge  and  control.  The  expenses  of 
the  War  Department  since  our  nationality  was  established 
amount  in  round  numbers  to  a  thousand  million  dollars, 
exclusive  of  the  Civil  War.  Of  this  sum  about  a  hundred 
million  was  spent  in  the  war  of  1812  and  the  Mexican  war. 


THE  ALTERNATIVE   FOR  THE   INDIAN.  571 

What  has  become  of  the  nine  hundred  millions  ?  The  civil 
disbursements  for  the  Indians,  in  bounties,  presents,  pen- 
sions, rations-,  and  trust  funds,  all  told  for  a  century,  are 
estimated  at  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  million  dollars. 
Of  this  sum,  fifty  millions  were  spent  under  the  sixty  years 
management  by  the  War  Department.  Under  the  new  man- 
agement, for  thirty  years  the  outlay  has  been  one  hundred 
and  twenty-five  millions.  The  average  expense  which  the 
Government  incurred  for  the  Indians  in  its  first  score  of 
years  was  ninety-five  thousand  dollars ;  for  each  of  the  last 
score  years  the  average  has  been  four  and  a  half  millions. 
Four  and  one  half  millions  is  annually  disbursed  in  stipula- 
ted pensions,  and  one  and  a  half  millions  for  running  con- 
tracts not  limited. 

Estimating  the  war  outlay  on  the  Indians  at  five  hundred 
millions,  and  the  civil  outlay  at  two  hundred,  we  find  that 
seven  hundred  million  dollars  is  a  moderate  summing  up 
of  our  charges  in  appropriating  or  conquering  a  portion 
only  of  the  continent  which  his  Holiness  the  Pope  gave 
to  his  Catholic  Majesty  for  —  nothing. 

But  enough  has  been  said  as  to  the  alternative  in  our 
policy  of  the  extermination  of  the  Indians.  We  are  not  to 
discuss  it,  nor  to  entertain  the  question.  If  our  nation  even 
only  covertly  and  contingently  had  it  in  view,  we  should  not 
dare  in  these  days  so  much  as  to  devise  or  conduct  our  meas- 
ures with  reference  to  its  likelihood  or  its  possibility.  Hu- 
manity insists  that  the  Indians  have  rights,  and  among 
them  the  right  of  life,  with  its  succession  and  entail.  The 
nation  must  face,  it  intends  to  face,  it  always  has  intended 
to  face,  this  duty  of  humanity  towards  the  Indians.  It  is 
to  be  a  costly,  a  perplexing,  often  a  most  discouraging  task. 
We  may  as  well  face  that  fact  too.  Before  the  nation  has 
come  to  a  settlement  in  behalf  of  its  Indian  wards,  and  has 
got  release  from  its  bonds  as  guardian,  it  will  have  settled 
all  the  old  scores  for  the  alleged  stealing  of  the  Indian's 
territory.  The  cost  will  be  larger  than  would  have  been 


572  MILITARY  AND   PEACE  POLICY. 

any  fair  purchase-price  from  the  first,  —  just  as  the  cost  of 
our  nation's  fight  for  freedom  would  twice  over  have 
bought  all  slaves  at  their  market  value,  and  w.ould  have  set 
them  up  with  houses  and  farms.  Yet  we  have  to  contem- 
plate for  long  years  to  come  a  drain  upon  our  resources  in 
addition  to  the  appropriations  for  army  and  navy,  for  pos- 
tal service  and  internal  improvements,  and  all  other  specifi- 
cations on  the  budget,  an  annual  outlay,  likely  for  many 
years  to  augment  rather  than  to  diminish,  for  teachers, 
implements,  instrumentalities  and  agencies  of  every  kind 
for  turning  some  two  hundred  thousand  barbarians  into  — 
whatever  it  may  prove  that  we  can  make  of  them. 

Incident  to  the  possession  of  the  full  power  of  superiority 
and  authority  which  our  Government  has  and  may  exercise 
towards  the  Indians,  we  have  a  full  right,  by  our  own  best 
wisdom,  and  then  even  by  compulsion,  to  dictate  terms  and 
conditions  to  them ;  to  use  constraint  and  force ;  to  say 
what  we  intend  to  do,  and  what  they  must  and  shall  do. 
If  we  are  the  wiser,  this  is  our  right;  if  our  intentions  are 
kind  and  just,  this  is  our  obligation ;  if  the  cost  of  success 
or  failure  falls  upon  us,  this  is  our  assurance  and  venture. 
This  rightful  power  of  ours  will  relieve  us  from  conforming 
to,  or  even  consulting  to  any  troublesome  extent,  the  views 
and  inclinations  of  the  Indians  whom  we  are  to  manage. 
A  vast  deal  of  folly  and  mischief  has  come  of  our  attempts  to 
accommodate  ourselves  to  them,  to  humor  their  whims  and 
caprices,  to  indulge  them  in  their  barbarous  ways  and  their 
inveterate  obstinacy.  Henceforward  they  must  conform  to 
our  best  views  of  what  is  for  their  good.  The  Indian  must 
be  made  to  feel  that  he  is  in  the  grasp  of  a  superior,  whose 
aim  is  to  bring  out  his  own  manhood,  and  to  give  him  self- 
reliance.  In  our  loose  and  lenient  way  of  exercising  au- 
thority over  the  Indians,  even  when  they  consent  to  submit 
to  it,  we  seem  to  have  forgotten  what  a  large  and  essential 
part  of  control  and  government  in  the  most  civilized  com- 
munities is  of  the  very  essence  of  compulsion,  almost  of 


COMPULSORY  DISCIPLINE.  573 

arbitrariness.  Let  a  citizen  of  one  of  our  oldest  and  most 
prosperous  towns  or  villages  reflect  how  his  natural  liberty 
is  circumscribed ;  how  his  inclinations,  habits,  acts,  and 
range  of  self-indulgence  are  under  surveillance ;  how  the  po- 
lice and  the  tax-gatherer  scan  him,  and  how  the  law  often 
bleeds  him.  One  half  of  all  our  citizens  at  one  time,  and 
the  other  half  at  another  time,  utter  chronic  complaints  of 
oppression  and  tyranny.  We  need  have  no  scruples,  there- 
fore, as  to  the  use  of  positive  and  constraining  authority  over 
the  Indians.  Of  the  need  of  this  we  find  assurance  when 
we  take  into  view  the  following  statement.  Large  numbers 
of  Indians  now  under  our  control,  according  to  the  season 
of  the  year  and  other  circumstances,  present  themselves  to 
us  in  these  three  very  different  characters:  First,  as  under 
our  discipline,  training,  and  instruction,  through  farmers 
and  teachers  residing  with  them,  to  make  them  self-depend- 
ent; second,  as  swarms  of  vagabond  paupers  coming  to 
the  distributing  agents  for  a  year's  dole  of  clothing,  food, 
arms,  ammunition,  and  implements ;  third,  as  having  waste- 
fully  exhausted  their  supplies,  and,  when  the  season  favors, 
rushing  out  with  the  arms  which  we  have  given  them,  in 
war  or  predatory  parties.  Here  we  have  the  same  inter- 
esting and  versatile  fellow-citizens  acting  yearly  in  the  roles 
of  pupils,  paupers,  enemies,  or  prisoners  of  war.  We  must 
insist  upon  their  keeping  one  of  those  three  characters  the 
year  through,  and  we  must  decide  which  it  shall  be.  It  is 
no  longer  binding  upon  us  to  feed  them  in  idleness  through 
three  quarters  of  the  year  on  their  reservations,  and  then 
to  allow  them  to  rush  out  on  pretence  of  hunting,  but  really 
to  prowl  and  plunder.  A  large  proportion  of  their  lands 
is  of  the  very  finest  dower  of  the  continent,  with  loam  a 
yard  deep,  with  succulent  grasses  on  which  cattle  may 
graze  all  the  year,  with  heavy  timber,  with  noble  mill- 
streams,  with  native  fruits  and  roots,  and  with  a  glorious 
climate.  When  one  thinks  of  the  generations  of  our  old 
New  England  stock,  who  contrived  to  live  and  prosper  over 


574  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

our  ridges  of  sand  and  gravel,  and  our  rocky  pastures 
where  the  hungry  ribs  of  the  earth  seem  actually  to  have 
broken  through  its  skin,  we  are  provoked  at  the  thought  of 
having  our  teeming  regions  of  the  West  turned  into  a 
mighty  poor-farm.  The  memory  and  traditions  of  the  first 
settlements  of  rugged  New  England  are  still  too  fresh, — 
indeed  the  present  hard-won  subsistence  of  those  who  still 
plough  and  hoe  its  stingy  farms  are  too  real  to  them,  —  to 
reconcile  them  to  the  policy  of  a  tax  from  the  nation's  rev- 
enue for  maintaining  the  thriftless  roamers  of  the  West. 

There  is  one  very  serious  consideration  bearing  upon  this 
momentous  question  of  our  immediate  future, relations  with 
our  Indian  tribes,  which  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  note 
has  not  received  its  due,  if  indeed  any,  attention  in  our 
Congressional  debates  or  in  the  discussions  in  our  journals. 
I  have  already  stated  the  fact  that  Great  Britain  has  do- 
minion over  more  territory  on  this  continent  than  is  con- 
trolled by  our  own  Government.  Great  Britain  was  once 
our  enemy.  She  certainly  cannot  have  forgotten  that; 
possibly  she  may  have  repented  of  it.  The  far-sighted  and 
sagacious  Dr.  Franklin,  in  the  treaty  arrangements  for 
closing;  up  our  war  of  Independence,  distinctly  recognized 
the  inevitable  fact,  that  territorial  possessions  on  this  con- 
tinent by  Great  Britain  would  always  be  of  tho  nature  of  a 
menace  to  us ;  at  any  rate  would  afford  a  harborage,  a  place 
of  deposit,  a  base  of  operations,  for  any  enemies  of  ours, 
whether  her  allies  or  not.  Twice  in  the  century  of  our  his- 
tory 1ms  that  foresight  of  Dr.  Franklin  been  certified,  —  in 
our  war  with  Britain  of  1812,  and  in  our  Civil  War.  And 
what  has  been  the  aspect  of  the  case  quite  recently  ?  Sit- 
ting Bull  probably  understands  it  better  than  some  of  us  do. 
Our  remaining  Indian  tribes  not  yet  gathered  into  treaty 
reservations,  or  objecting  to  be  sent  south  into  the  Indian 
territory,  tend  to  cluster  in  our  northwest  border,  just 
where  we  bound  upon  the  vast  expanses  of  the  wilderness 
held  by  Great  Britain.  If  we  still  pursue  our  war  measures 


THE   INDIANS   TO   BE   SELF-SUPPORTING.  575 

with  the  Indians,  many  of  them  when  hard  pressed  will 
find  a  refuge,  a  breathing  spell,  and  —  we  may  as  well 
speak  out  what  we  know  —  aid  and  comfort  on  the  other 
side  of  the  geometrical  boundary  line.  There  they  will 
recruit ;  and  thence,  at  their  pleasure,  they  will  renew  their 
raids.  Our  redress,  through  protests,  diplomatic  proces- 
ses, and  "distinguished  considerations,"  will  first  be  sought 
through  functionaries  of  the  Dominion  Government,  and 
ultimately  of  the  Crown.  We  may  make  a  bugbear  of  this 
if  we  choose,  or  we  may  reduce  the  aspect  of  things  to  the 
dimensions  of  simple,  sober  reason.  In  either  case,  it 
certainly  does  warn  or  advise  us  to  keep  all  the  Indians 
for  whom  we  are  responsible  under  our  own  management 
and  oversight,  without  outside  stimulus  or  reinforcement. 
This  is  another  recommendation  of  the  peace  policy,  for 
taming  and  reducing  the  savages  to  fixed  residence,  to 
individual  rights  in  the  soil,  independently  of  their  tribal 
relations,  and  to  thrifty  habits  of  agriculture  and  industry. 
Positively  and  sternly,  if  need  be,  and  with  the  help  of 
all  its  appliances  of  authority  and  force,  must  Government 
put  and  keep  the  savage  tribes  under  conditions  in  which 
they  must  work  for  their  own  subsistence  by  manual  labor 
and  ingenuity.  The  soil  and  water  of  their  own  reserva- 
tions, not  the  United  States  Treasury,  must  furnish  them  a 
livelihood.  Added  to  all  the  old-time  grievances  which  the 
natives  have  had  against  the  whites  for  appropriating  their 
lands,  for  crowding  and  slaughtering  them,  there  has  been 
a  new,  and  at  present  a  very  piteous  and  abject,  one,  —  that 
the  Government  does  not  generously  and  promptly  feed 
and  clothe  and  arm  them  so  that  they  may  subsist  in  idle- 
ness. To  all  its  pledged  covenants  for  annuities  and  ra- 
tions with  the  treaty  tribes,  the  Government  of  course 
must  be  true  ;  saving  only,  under  the  stern  pressure  of 
circumstances,  a  Government  right  of  revising  the  form 
and  material  under  which  promised  help  or  remuneration 
shall  be  furnished.  But  this  exaction  of  residence  and 


576  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY.       . 

labor  on  their  reservations  must  be  the  prime  and  over- 
ruling condition.  And  actual  compulsion  will  be  justifiable 
in  the  process,  as  much  with  reference  to  the  real  security 
and  welfare  of  the  Indians  as  for  any  ends  of  our  own. 
Nor  must  we  fear  lest  this  course  be  inconsistent  with  an 
approved  peace  policy.  The  laxness  of  the  peace  policy 
—  its  slack  and  halting  and  indulgent  weakness  —  is  not 
only  a  plausible,  but  it  is  a  reasonable  and  forcible,  ground 
for  insisting,  as  many  do,  upon  some  indispensable  element 
of  the  war  policy.  The  Indians  compel  their  squaws  to 
work,  and  the  squaws  obey.  No  women  on  the  face  of  this 
earth  — in  factory,  mine,  kitchen,  or  field  —  are  more  labo- 
riously tasked  with  burden  and  toil  than  are  those  squaws. 
The  very  sight  of  one  of  them  —  haggard,  bent,  and  shriv- 
elled before  middle  life  —  tells  the  whole  tale.  If  the  men 
would  labor  as  they  compel  the  squaws  to  labor,  on  their 
rich  and  easy  soil,  with  timber  and  much  game  still  at 
hand,  they  would  not  need  the  dole  of  Government  ra- 
tions, though  they  do  need  our  implements  and  tools. 

Now,  just  as  the  men  compel  the  women  to  work,  so  let 
Government  stiffly  impose  the  same  obligation  on  the  men. 
On  this  whole  broad  continent,  now  belted  round  with  the 
processes  and  fruits  of  civilization  and  coursed  by  the  high- 
ways of  transit  and  traffic,  no  barbarous  hordes  can  expect 
to  cover  themselves  in  its  inner  depths  in  savagery,  indo- 
lence, or  thriftlessness,  drawing  a  precarious  subsistence 
from  skimming  the  earth's  surface  products,  while  the 
wild  beasts,  as  they  annually  waste  under  the  chase,  might 
give  them  a  hint  that  they  too  must  vanish  as  wild  men. 

It  is  preposterous  to  suppose  that  some  two  or  three 
hundred  thousands  of  these  idle-roving  bands  should  from 
year  to  year  be  fed  and  armed  and  clothed  and  petted  in 
their  wastefulness  and  improvidence  at  the  charge  of  the 
laboring  classes  of  the  civilized.  Absurd  as  a  spectacle, 
and  outrageous  as  an  imposition  on  the  toilers  of  our  coun- 
try, is  the  transporting  of  grains  and  meats  and  guns  and 


SECURITIES   FOR  THE  INDIANS.  577 

blankets,  and  even  of  the  luxuries  of  our  cities,  over  the 
wilderness  highways,  to  be  distributed  at  the  agencies  to 
these  arrogant  paupers,  on  the  plea  that  their  ancestors 
once  roamed  free  there. 

Wise  and  able  men  have  sometimes  found  it  a  serious 
task  to  prove  the  divine  right  of  society,  of  civilization,  of 
government ;  but  we  need  not  assume,  take  for  granted, 
and  claim  deference  for  the  divine  right  of  savagery.  At 
some  point  in  the  line  of  generations  this  entail  of  barbar- 
ism must  be  arrested.  There  is  no  reason  why  the  succes- 
sive offspring  of  our  wild  hordes  should  accede  to  the 
immunities  of  their  ancestors  when  the  condition  of  this 
continent  was  as  wild  as  their  own.  The  civilizing  and  hu- 
manizing of  grown-up  savages  is  declared,  yes  and  proved, 
to  be  utterly  hopeless  and  impossible.  Even  their  children 
brought  up  in  schools  and  villages  will  generally  take  to 
the  woods  at  the  first  opportunity ;  for  the  flavor  and  zest 
of  the  wilderness  are  in  their  blood  and  tissues  and  spi- 
rits. So  the  grandchildren,  the  third  generation,  alone 
furnish  material  for  hopeful  reclaiming.  But  the  ground 
of  the  hope  depends  upon  their  grandparents  working  on 
their  own  lands  and  making  the  first  stages  of  transition 
from  beastliness. 

And  there  is  another,  a  most  cogent,  reason  why  Govern- 
ment should  compel  the  Indians  to  seek  subsistence  by 
labor  on  their  reservations.  If  not  the  only,  still  by  far 
the  most  effective,  security  which  the  Indians  can  have  of 
retaining  these  reservations  against  the  encroachments  of 
the  whites,  now  complained  of  as  the  chief  justification 
of  fresh  hostilities,  is  in  putting  into  them  the  added  value 
and  certified  right  of  improvement,  of  betterment ;  the 
clearing,  the  dwelling,  the  well,  the  fence,  the  growing 
crop,  —  the  home.  The  white  man  respects  these  tokens 
of  ownership  and  possession.  If  not  sacred,  they  are  warn- 
ings to  him  against  intrusion  and  violation.  The  Mormon 
settlements,  with  all  their  odious  institutions,  have  found 

37 


578  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

their  chief  security  in  their  industry  and  thrift.  All  the 
pleadings  that  can  be  uttered  in  the  name  of  an  ancient 
right  or  on  the  score  of  humanity  will  never  persuade  the 
white  man  of  average  intelligence  who  improves  his  patch 
of  land,  under  taxation  which  increases  exactly  as  he  im- 
proves it,  that  beyond  a  certain  boundary-line  men  and 
women  may  live  in  idleness  on  vast  spaces  of  rich  soil,  and 
call  for  all  supplies  to  be  sent  to  them  free  of  charge. 

Experience  and  the  best  practical  wisdom  which  they 
can  bring  to  bear  on  the  subject  have  led  the  heads  of  our 
Indian  Bureau  to  suggest  for  the  future  a  radical  change 
in  the  disposal  by  our  Government  of  the  matter  of  Indian 
reservations.  The  principle  underlying  the  provision  of 
reservations,  from  the  first  recourse  to  them,  was  this :  the 
solemn  covenanting  with  the  Indians  —  one  or  more  tribes 
of  them  —  to  secure  to  them  forever  portions  of  all  the  ter- 
ritory on  this  continent,  in  consideration  of  our  having 
seized  other  parts  of  it.  On  the  supposition  that  the  hordes 
which  the  white  men  found  in  roaming,  nomadic  occupancy 
here  were  the  lawful  holders  of  a  perpetual  fee  in  the 
territory,  there  would  be  something  farcical  in  an  intruding 
people  covenanting  back  to  them  a  fragment  from  the 
spoils  of  the  whole.  It  is  more  reasonable,  therefore,  to 
suppose  that  the  whites,  not  believing  that  the  savage 
roamers  had  a  legal  and  inextinguishable  claim  to  the 
whole  or  even  any  part  of  the  territory,  thought  they  were 
making  a  generous  settlement  of  any  doubt  there  might 
be  in  the  case,  by  bounding  a  region  here  and  there,  and 
assuring  it  to  the  Indians.  The  pledges  of  these  reserva- 
tions use  the  phrase  "  for  ever."  The  tendency  of  modern 
thought  and  speculation  is  to  regard  nothing  as  eternal 
except  eternity  itself. 

The  precedent  for  Indian  reservations  was  very  early,  and 
first,  set  by  the  Massachusetts  Colony  Court.  As  a  general 
rule,  we  may  say  that  the  Indians  who  have  had  reserva- 
tions assigned  to  them  have  been  broken  and  defeated 


WASTEFUL   RESERVATIONS.  579 

tribes,  humbled  by  the  whites  or  by  other  tribes.  Their 
obligation  to,  and  semi-dependence  upon,  us  often  led  to 
their  answer  to  our  call  to  furnish  us  scouts,  trailers,  and 
other  allies  in  our  hostilities  with  other  tribes.  In  the 
original  design  and  planning  of  these  reservations  —  except 
in  the  case  of  such  town-lots  as  Massachusetts  assigned  to 
the  Indians  under  training,  and  the  circumscribed  territory 
which  New  York  set  apart  for  the  Six  Nations ;  in  fact,  in 
all  the  reservations  for  the  Indians  made  by  our  Govern- 
ment —  the  intention  was  to  leave  the  natives  free  to  their 
own  habits  and  mode  of  life ;  to  subsist,  if  they  pleased, 
without  labor,  by  hunting  and  fishing ;  keeping  aloof  from 
the  whites,  or  maintaining  traffic  with  them  in  peltries.  Of 
course,  this  plan  required  vast  expanses  of  territory,  which 
we  thought  we  could  afford  to  dispense  with,  as  we  had  so 
much  that  we  were  not  likely  to  need  for  centuries  to  come. 
Once  it  was  proposed  that  there  should  be  one  enormous 
reservation,  to  gather  in  all  the  tribes.  Fifty  years  ago  Mr. 
Calhoun  advised  that  there  should  be  two,  a  Northern  and 
a  Southern.  As  it  is,  we  have  them  now  scattered  all  over 
the  West,  South,  and  North  in  patches, — if  we  may  call 
such  stretches  of  space  (some  of  them  unsurveyed  and  un- 
explored) "  patches."  The  Indian  Territory  on  which  the 
first  reservation  was  made,  in  1831,  lies  south  of  Kansas, 
north  of  Texas,  and  west  of  Arkansas.  It  has  upon  it  reser- 
vations for  a  score  or  more  of  tribes  or  parts  of  tribes.  Its 
area  is  over  sixty-four  thousand  square  miles,  —  over  forty- 
one  millions  of  acres.  One  railroad  now  penetrates  it,  and 
two  others  skirt  it.  The  States  around  it  are  flourishing  and 
populous  ;  but  this  magnificent  region  —  rich,  well  watered, 
and  timbered  —  is  practically  secluded  as  a  waste,  and  as 
profitless  as  if  it  were  a  desert.  Each  human  being  on 
it  has  an  average  space  of  one  square  mile ;  New  York  has 
ninety-four  persons  on  each  one  of  its  square  miles,  and  Mas- 
sachusetts has  more  than  one  hundred  and  eighty  persons ; 
Belgium  supports  three  hundred  and  fifty  persons,  and  the 


580  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

continent  of  Europe  seventy  persons  to  a  square  mile.  An 
acre  of  the  Indian  Territory  has  a  productive  power  of  that 
of  ten  average  acres  of  Massachusetts  soil.  Of  the  seventy 
thousand  persons  inhabiting  it,  scarcely  half  are  of  pure  In- 
dian blood.  No  white  man  can  reside  there  unless  he  has 
for  a  wife  an  Indian  squaw,  and  so  secures  the  noble  title 
of  "  a  squaw  man."  There  are  four  thousand  whites  and 
six  thousand  negroes,  formerly  slaves  to  the  Indians.  The 
mongrel  breeds  are  steadily  increasing  and  the  pure  race 
dying  out.  Practically  there  is  no  local  law  in  the  Terri- 
tory, and  the  United  States  jurisdiction  is  little  more  than 
nominal.  It  is  hardly  strange  that,  under  these  circum- 
stances, Congress  should  have  appointed  a  Senatorial  Com- 
mission with  reference  to  organizing  a  new  Territory  from 
this  abused  waste  (the  name  proposed  being  Oklahoma), 
special  care  being  had  for  securing  to  the  occupants,  by  a 
breaking  up  of  tribal  relations,  homestead  farms  in  perpe- 
tuity and  money  annuities. 

There  are  also  reservations  in  the  States  of  New  York 
(the  oldest  dating  from  1794),  North  Carolina,  Iowa,  Kan- 
sas, Michigan,  Minnesota,  Nebraska,  Nevada,  Wisconsin, 
California,  and  Oregon ;  and  in  the  Territories  of  Arizona, 
Dakota,  Idaho,  Montana,  New  Mexico,  Utah,  Washington, 
and  Wyoming.  These  reservations,  including  the  Indian 
Territory,  cover  an  area  of  about  two  hundred  and  forty- 
three  thousand  and  ninety-one  square  miles,  or  nearly  one 
hundred  and  fifty-six  million  acres. 

It  is  estimated  that  one  sixth  of  our  Indian  population  is 
of  mixed  blood ;  and  that  of  the  Cherokees,  Creeks,  Choc- 
taws,  Chickasaws,  and  Seminoles,  only  one  half  are  wholly 
of  the  pure  race.  By  our  last  census  we  had  one  hundred 
and  fifty  whites,  and  twelve  negroes  or  mulattoes,  to  each 
Indian. 

We  are  experiencing,  in  our  joint  interests  as  a  nation 
and  in  those  of  a  common  civilization,  the  embarrassments 
attending  this  system  of  reservations.  The  single  States 


TRESPASSES  ON  RESERVATIONS.  581 

and  Territories  in  whose  bounds  they  lie  are  subjected  by 
them  to  all  sorts  of  annoyances,  complications,  and  practi- 
cal evils.  It  is  found  to  be  utterly  impossible  to  restrict 
the  Indians  to  them.  In  some  treaties  a  conditional  privi- 
lege has  been  covenanted  to  the  occupants  of  hunting  be- 
yond them ;  in  others  this  liberty  has  been  restrained.  But 
neither  the  limited  right  nor  the  positive  restriction  avail  to 
keep  the  most  active  and  restive  of  the  Indians  from  lawless 
and  dangerous  roaming,  provoking  hostilities. 

In  the  mean  time  we  have  found  that  it  is  inexpedient 
and  impracticable,  if  not  actually  impossible,  to  isolate  and 
segregate  from  civilized  privileges  and  uses  such  vast  ex- 
panses of  rich  and  desirable  territory.  Our  own  restless, 
enterprising,  adventurous,  and  rapidly  thickening  popula- 
tion will  not  be  kept  out  of  them.  The  discovery  of  mineral 
wealth  in  them  operates  like  a  clarion  blast  to  summon 
armed  companies  of  miners  and  of  purveyors  to  their  wants. 
Then,  too,  the  maintenance  of  Government  posts  and  agen- 
cies makes  necessary  roads,  mail-routes,  and  stations ;  and 
the  railroad  becomes  of  itself  a  primary  law  of  Nature, 
carrying  with  it  a  right  of  eminent  domain. 

And  just  coincident  with  the  pressure  of  these  urgent 
reasons  conflicting  with  the  theory  and  the  working  of 
Indian  reservations,  philanthropical  and  economical  con- 
siderations, having  in  view  simply  the  best  good  if  not  the 
preservation  from  extinction  of  the  natives  themselves, 
come  in  to  indicate  the  necessity  of  a  radical  change  of 
policy.  The  steady  failure  of  game  and  of  the  other  con- 
ditions requisite  for  the  continuance  of  the  wild  life  of  the 
Indians  in  their  tribal  relations  is  reducing  them  to  a  mis- 
erable, idle,  and  vegetative  state,  under  which  they  rapidly 
deteriorate  and  become  utterly  demoralized  as  vagrants  and 
paupers.  If  we  wish  to  reclaim  or  save  them,  and  relieve 
our  own  burdens  in  their  support,  we  must  feel  fully  justi- 
fied in  a  recourse  even  to  many  breaches  of  covenant  of 
our  own  pledged  faith.  The  conditions  under  which  we 


582      .  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

made  those  covenants  have  essentially  changed,  —  changed 
for  both  parties ;  changed,  too,  not  by  any  scheming  or 
planning  of  our  own  to  furnish  us  with  pretences  for 
trifling  with  them,  but  by  the  incalculable  and  irresistible 
working  of  agencies  and  circumstances  that  have  made  it 
not  only  inconvenient  but  wholly  impracticable  for  the 
covenants  to  remain  in  force.  The  Indians  expected  to 
live  upon  the  reservations  by  hunting,  without  labor.  We 
covenanted  the  lands  to  them  for  no  other  purpose,  igno- 
rant of  their  buried  wealth,  not  foreseeing  the  absolute 
necessity  that  we  should  have  to  pass  through  them.  The 
Indians  cannot  live  as  it  was  expected  by  themselves  and 
by  ourselves  that  they  would  live,  and  our  people  cannot 
be  restrained  from  availing  themselves  of  new  conditions. 
The  case  thus  becomes  essentially  one  of  those  to  be  re- 
ferred to  chancery  jurisdiction ;  the  terms  of  a  trust,  in 
its  direction,  conditions,  and  uses,  having  become  antiqua- 
ted and  obsolete,  an  alternative  method  must  be  indicated 
as  near  as  possible  to  absolute  justice  in  new  terms. 

The  policy  now  proposed  is  to  have  a  few  very  large  res- 
ervations, divided  into  several  small  contiguous  ones  for 
different  tribes,  —  even  of  those  which  have  been  hostile  to 
each  other,  —  with  an  ultimate  view  that  the  large  reserva- 
tion shall  at  some  time  become  a  State  in  the  Union,  of 
which  the  smaller  ones  shall  be  counties. 

All  the  exigencies  of  the  case  point  to  the  absolute  ne- 
cessity of  bringing  the  Indians  under  humane  and  kind, 
and  at  the  same  time  rigid  and  inflexible,  control  as  sub- 
jects of  civilized  law.  They  are  to  be  compelled  to  live 
and  work  after  the  manner  of  civilized  people.  They  can 
no  longer  have  such  extensive  wild  reaches  of  territory  ; 
we  must  contract  their  bounds.  They  must  no  longer  be 
nomadic,  with  hunting  as  their  main  dependence,  and  pil- 
fering as  holiday  work,  with  horse-stealing  and  cattle-slay- 
ing for  a  trial  of  their  prowess.  Their  tribal  relations 
must  be  broken  up,  and  we  must  recognize  them  as  indi- 


SEMI-CIVILIZED   TRIBES.  583 

viduals  ;  and  then,  as  their  territorial  domains  are  circum- 
scribed, their  land  can  be  distributed  to  individual  occu- 
pants. As  the  question  presents  itself,  how  large  a  land 
allotment  shall  be  made  to  each  for  concentration  of  work 
and  for  support,  we  may  be  guided  somewhat  by  the  Gov- 
ernment measurement  of  a  homestead  lot  for  a  white  fam- 
ily, which  is  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres. 

Sooner  or  later,  and  the  sooner  the  better,  the  Govern- 
ment, instead  of  distributing  among  the  Indians  the  best 
breech-loaders  and  ammunition  and  metallic  cartridges, 
must  put  in  force  the  extreme  measure  of  actually  disarm- 
ing them.  Practically  this  will  be  no  undue  severity  or 
hardship,  as  we  ourselves  are  in  effect  disarmed,  —  the 
guns  of  our  militia  even  not  belonging  to  those  who  bear 
them.  In  Canada  the  Indians  are  to  a  large  extent  kept 
in  control  by  an  Indian  police ;  and  it  has  been  advocated 
by  wise  and  experienced  advisers  among  us  that  we  intro- 
duce a  system  by  which  the  young  Indian  braves — armed 
or  unarmed  —  should  be  organized  for  that  service  among 
our  tribes. 

While  the  most  hopeful  believers  in  the  capacity  of  the 
Indians  for  civilization  make  these  conditions  to  be  primary, 
they  maintain  that  we  have  a  basis  to  work  upon  in  the  pro- 
gress already  made  by  portions  of  the  tribes  of  Cherokees, 
Choctaws,  Seminoles,  Creeks,  and  Chickasaws,  who  in  the 
first  third  of  this  century  were  such  hardy  fighters  against 
us.  x/tt  is  somewhat  wildly  affirmed  that  just  before  our 
war  of  rebellion  the  Cherokees  were  the  richest  people  per 
capita  in  the  world.  vHowever  this  may  be,  they  have 
largely  abandoned  roaming  and  the  chase,  have  learned  to 
become  herdsmen  and  agriculturists,  to  build  houses  and 
put  up  fences,  to  have  their  individual  farms  and  their  pri- 
vate property,  and  to  know  some  of  the  advantages  of 
schools,  churches,  trades,  and  tools.  V  Hence  comes  the 
suggestion  that  for  the  future  the  gifts  of  our  Govern- 
ment to  the  Indians  should  no  longer  be  in  money,  fire- 


584  MILITARY   AND   PEACE   POLICY. 

arms,  nor  even   food,  but  in   farming   stock,   tools,   and 
implements. 

All  this  so  far  is  recognized  by  us  as  learned  from  past 
experience,  with  its  attempts  and  failures,  and  as  sug- 
gested by  the  wisest  advisers  for  the  future.  And  the 
practical  question  is  forced  upon  us,  How  shall  we  bring 
about  this  radical  change  in  our  Indian  policy,  and  realize 
for  the  future  security  for  ourselves  and  the  harmlessness 
and  welfare  of  the  native  tribes  ?  The  aim  being  economic, 
—  one  of  comprehensive  methods  and  results,  engaging 
precisely  the  same  agencies  which  insure  thrift  and  pros- 
perity to  our  civilized  communities,  —  we  must  enlist  in  its 
furtherance  all  the  legal,  social,  and  educational  appliances 
on  which  we  ourselves  depend.  The  end  in  view  is  pacifi- 
catory. The  measures  for  securing  it,  even  those  which 
require  force,  compulsion,  and  coercion,  must  be  in  har- 
mony with  it.  The  Indians  must  be  put  under  the  control 
and  protection  of  laws,  and  so  in  conformity  with  our  own 
institutions  they  must  be  made  citizens  as  soon  as  possi- 
ble, making  'and  administering  their  own  laws.  Till  they 
are  capable  of  this  privilege  and  responsibility,  they  must 
come  under  our  laws,  being  helped  as  much  as  possible  to 
understand  and  approve  them,  —  at  any  rate  being  held 
to  obey  them.  So  far  as  these  laws  of  our  communities  — 
national,  State,  municipal,  or  social — require  temporary 
modification  or  adaptation  for  any  body  of  Indians,  wise 
administration  can  meet  the  emergency.  'So  long  as  we 
have  savages  to  deal  with  we  shall  need  the  military  arm, 
as  we  still  need  it  against  some  classes  and  in  some  tur- 
bulencies  of  our  civilized  communities.  Real  paupers  — 
from  incompetency,  disability,  or  misfortune  —  are  not 
such  unknown  characters  among  ourselves  as  to  make 
it  necessary  that  we  be  taught  or  urged  to  our  duty  of 
common  humanity  towards  what  must  ^necessarily  be  a 
very  large  class  of  such  in  many  Indian  tribes.  But  pau- 
pers among  ourselves  are  cared  for  by  the  more  thrifty  of 


INDIAN   COMMUNISM.  585 

those  in  each  local  community ;  and  as  soon  as  possible  the 
disabled,  the  aged,  and  the  needy  of  an  Indian  community 
should  look  for  their  relief,  not  to  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment, but  to  their  able-bodied  fellows.  The  peace  policy 
is  put  upon  its  vindication,  not  only  against  the  war  pol- 
icy, but  also  against  that  fostering  and  entail  of  pauperism 
among  the  Indian  tribes  which  is  taking  the  manhood  out 
of  them,  and  burdening  a  hard-working  people  for  whom 
the  struggle  for  existence  is  already  sharp  enough. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  fact,  that,  just  coincident  with  the 
fierce  working  of  our  socialistic  problems  which  has  devel- 
oped the  communistic  theory  as  the  relief  for  all  the  evils  of 
our  civilized  state,  our  wisest  statesmen  and  philanthropists 
should  find  in  this  same  communism — the  very  basis  of  Ind- 
ian tribal  life — the  most  formidable  obstacle  to  the  relief, 
the  improvement,  and  the  civilization  of  the  savages.  How- 
ever wide  and  earnest  and  impassioned  the  differences  as 
to  a  wise  Indian  policy  entertained  by  those  who  discuss 
the  subject,  one  point  in  which  they  all  heartily  accord  is 
this, — the  Indian  will  never  be  reclaimed  till  he  ceases  to 
be  a  communist.  He  must  give  up  his  tribal  relations  so 
far  as  they  involve  and  cover  a  merging  of  all  his  individ- 
ual proprietary  rights  to  territory,  for  a  joint  and  common 
privilege  in  a  vast  and  unimproved  domain.  He  will  be  a 
vagabond  and  a  pauper  so  long  as  he  is  not  an  individual 
proprietor  and  possessor,  with  a  piece  of  land  held  by  him 
in  fee,  with  tokens  of  his  own  interest  and  ownership.  We 
are  told  that  some  of  the  tribes,  under  the  influence  of  a 
few  astute  chiefs,  protest  against  the  assigning  of  portions 
of  their  reservations  in  severalty  to  families,  guarded  by 
the  provision  that  for  a  term  of  years  each  such  homestead 
shall  be  inalienable.  The  ground  of  the  objection  is  that 
the  tribal  hold  upon  territory  is  more  secure  when  it  is  held 
in  common.  This  argument  would  be  more  plausible,  and 
indeed  really  a  strong  one,  were  the  reservations  themselves 
secure  in  their  tenure  and  permanency.  But  we  have  seen 


586  MILITARY   AND    PEACE   POLICY. 

at  what  risks  they  are  now  held,  in  consequence,  not  of  the 
alleged  perfidious  conduct  of  our  Government,  but  through 
the  working  of  irresistible  forces  in  the  development  of 
circumstances.  Therefore  it  may  as  well  be  frankly  con- 
fessed that  our  Government  cannot,  if  it  would,  secure  to 
any  tribe  now  under  treaty  a  perpetual  communal  hold 
upon  the  far-stretching  acres  of  its  reservation.  A  right 
in  severalty,  followed  by  possession  and  improvement,  is 
inviolable.  That  is  a  right  which  comes  of  civilization 
in  its  triumph  over  barbarism.  To  enjoy  and  secure  that 
right  not  only  implies  civilization,  but  helps  also  to  civilize. 
This  prepares  us  to  turn  to  the  last  and  most  attractive 
of  the  themes  comprehended  in  our  subject. 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE  INDIANS  UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

"  EXTINCTION  or  civilization  is  the  alternative  for  those 
of  the  Indian  race  living  in  the  near  future  on  our  national 
domain."  It  would  be  well-nigh  as  difficult  to  assign  this 
oft-repeated  sentence,  as  it  would  be  one  of  our  familiar 
proverbs,  to  an  individual  authority.  All  past  experience, 
all  practical  wisdom  for  the  present,  all  reasonable  forecast- 
ing of  what  may  be  before  us  compel  us  to  face  the  terms 
of'  that  alternative.  And  even  this  limitation  within  two 
conditions  comes  to  us  prejudiced  by  the  decision  already 
reached  by  very  many  persons — it  would  be  difficult  to  say 
whether  a  majority  or  a  minority  among  us  —  who,  satisfied 
that  the  Indians  are  incapable  and  intractable  for  the  pro- 
cess of  civilization,  accept  for  them  the  doom  of  extinction 
as  a  race.  This  decision  has  been  reached  and  avowed  by 
many  of  the  most  eminent  and  humane  of  our  statesmen 
during  the  whole  century ;  it  has  been  almost  uniformly 
approved  by  our  military  men ;  it  has  been  adopted  by  vast 
multitudes  of  those  who  have  had  the  fullest  and  most  in- 
timate knowledge  of  Indian  character  and  life.  Whether 
those  who  hold  this  opinion  or  conviction  follow  it  out  in 
their  own  minds  with  the  course  of  measures  on  the  part 
of  our  Government  and  people  which  is  to  be  engaged  to 
verify  it  and  to  effect  the  result,  must  be  left  to  inference. 
Those  who  reject  and  denounce  this  dismal  decision  as  too 
abominable  and  hideous  even  for  discussion,  will  of  course 
insist  that  the  civilization  of  the  Indians  is  at  all  events 


588  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

from  this  year  onward  to  be  the  solution  of  the  problem 
that  has  so  long  vexed  us.  As  to  any  indisposition  of  the 
Indians  to  submit  to  the  process,  any  intractability  or  posi- 
tive resistance  to  it  on  their  part,  the  answer  is,  If  civiliza- 
tion is  not  voluntary  on  their  part  it  must  be  compulsory ; 
and  the  whole  force  of  the  Government,  arbitrary  and  ir- 
resistible if  need  be,  must  be  engaged  for  a  peaceful  and 
rightful  method,  which  in  its  severities  will  always  stop 
short  of  the  inhumanities  of  war.  These  are  the  leading 
statements  which  introduce  our  present  subject.  Not  un- 
frequently,  in  place  of  the  milder  word  extinction  the  sterner 
word  extermination  is  boldly  used  to  define  the  alternative 
fate  of  the  Indians.  The  difference  between  the  words 
hardly  needs  to  be  morally  denned  here.  One  may  speak 
of  the  extinction  of  the  Indians  as  a  result  which  might 
follow  from  natural  agencies,  irresistible  and  not  requiring 
any  external  force  to  insure  it.  Extermination  implies  the 
use  of  violent  measures  to  effect  it. 

The  Indian  as  a  subject  for  civilization  furnishes  us  a 
topic  of  profound  and  varied  interest.  It  does  so  because 
it  gathers  up  so  many  efforts,  earnest  but  futile,  for  effect- 
ing  the  civilization  of  savages  ;  because  it  has  called  forth 
such  extreme  differences  of  opinion  among  wise  and  good 
men ;  and,  more  than  all,  because,  with  the  dread  alterna- 
tive of  extinction  or  extermination,  it  suspends  the  inevi- 
table destiny  of  the  aboriginal  race.  The  whites  assume 
the  arbitration  on  this  issue,  and  do  not  leave  preference  or 
even  the  right  of  choice  with  the  Indian.  Over  and  over 
again  civilization  has  been  proffered  to  and  urged  upon 
tribes  of  Indians.  The  proffer  seems,  till  quite  recently, 
to  have  been  considered  by  them  with  such  intelligence  as 
they  have,  to  have  been  appreciated  and  weighed  by  them, 
and  then  deliberately  rejected  ;  yes,  even  in  dispassionate 
and  kind  terms,  and  with  reasons  and  arguments  offered 
for  declining  the  favor. 

It  seems  but  rarely  to  have  occurred  to  civilized  white 


DRAWBACKS   OF   CIVILIZATION.  589 

people  to  consider  whether  the  indisposition  on  the  part  of 
the  savage  to  adopt  our  ways  of  life  —  instead  of  being 
wholly  chargeable  to  ignorance,  dulness,  or  indocility  on 
his  side  —  may  not  also  indicate  that  our  civilization  is 
not  in  all  respects  a  desirable  or  faultless  thing.  There 
may  be  in  it  qualifications  and  abatements  of  good  which 
the  Indian  may  detect,  and  which  signify  more  to  him  than 
they  do  to  us.  At  any  rate,  he  considers  himself  rid  of  all 
class  distinctions  of  the  rich  and  poor,  the  humble  and  the 
privileged.  The  whole  slavery  of  industry,  toil,  struggle, 
and  rivalry  for  a  living  presents  to  him  an  uninviting  as- 
pect. More  than  this :  if  our  modern  communists,  plead- 
ing for  the  removal  of  individual  rights  of  property  and  the 
joint  ownership  of  everything,  are  really  the  advanced  and 
wise  theorists  which  they  claim  to  be,  the  Indians  have 
long  had  the  start  of  them  in  that  matter.  The  Indians, 
too,  might  quote  many  pages  of  our  own  literature,  if 
known  to  them,  —  essays,  for  instance,  of  Burke  and  Rous- 
seau,—  favoring  the  wilderness  state  as  the  natural  and 
happy  state  for  man.  Nor  is  it  at  all  to  be  wondered  at, 
that  not  only  idealists,  but  also  some  thoughtful,  experi- 
enced, and  practical  persons,  feeling  the  oppressive  burdens 
of  the  social  state  under  all  the  thickening  and  threatening 
problems  which,  once  opened,  are  never  disposed  of,  recur 
to  former  less  advanced  stages  of  human  society  as  really 
preferable  •  to  our  own.  Some  in  this  backward  gaze  rest 
simply  with  the  pastoral,  agricultural  stage ;  others  fondly 
seize  on  the  charms  and  freedom  of  the  wild  hunter's  life. 
The  Indian,  as  we  shall  see,  is  more  than  content  with  the 
latter. 

We  have  to  note  the  very  positive  fact  that  civilization 
assumes  as  its  prerogative  the  natural  right  to  force  itself 
upon  people  who  do  not  ask  for  it  nor  want  it,  and  who 
even  refuse  to  receive  it.  We  practise  first  upon  animals, 
—  wild  cattle,  parrots,  and  other  creatures,  —  and  tame 
and  domesticate  as  many  of  them  as  possible.  The  horse, 


590  THE  INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION.' 

the  camel,  the  dog,  the  elephant,  and  the  domestic  fowls 
yield  to  our  will.  We  try  our  skill  also  on  flowers,  fruits, 
vegetables,  and  berries.  As  nations  become  powerful  and 
learn  to  course  the  seas,  they  spy  out  the  people  of  coun- 
tries, continents,  and  islands,  who,  having  long  been  left 
to  themselves,  have  fallen  into  ways  of  their  own.  Then 
they  assume  the  right  "  to  open "  (as  they  say)  those 
countries  and  people  to  the  daylight,  to  bring  them  into 
the  comity  of  nations,  to  compel  them  into  intercourse 
and  commerce.  So  India,  China,  and  Japan  have  been 
"  opened,"  and  made  to  open  their  ports,  to  enter  into  con- 
sular arrangements,  exchange  commodities,  etc.  We  qui- 
etly assume  that  if  such  places  and  people  are  civilized  at 
all,  their  civilization  is  of  a  lower  grade  than  ours.  They 
do  not  invite  us,  nor  welcome  us.  So  much  the  worse  for 
them.  Do  you  wish  to  be  civilized  ?  Are  you  willing  to  be 
civilized?  —  are  questions  which  civilized  courtesy  might 
prompt ;  but  they  are  generally  overlooked,  and  no  alterna- 
tive is  allowed.  And  here  would  naturally  come  in  a  ques- 
tion which  to  some  persons  seems  a  very  simple  one :  Why, 
on  the  broad  and  ample  fields  of  this  continent,  whose 
larger  expanses  are  still  in  a  wild  state,  have  not  the  red 
man  and  the  white  man  consented  to  keep  apart,  leaving 
each  other  alone,  each  to  his  own  preferred  way  of  life  ? 
Why  these  three  centuries  of  warfare,  this  pushing  and 
resisting,  these  endless  collisions,  waking  the  echoes  of 
mountain  and  valley  with  the  enginery  of  battle,  crimson- 
ing every  water-flow  with  blood,  and  strewing  forest  and 
plain  with  the  bleaching  bones  of  the  unburied  dead  ?  The 
only  answer  to  be  given  is,  that  civilization  has  the  restless- 
ness and  working  energy  of  leaven.  Over  and  over  again 
has  the  Indian,  alike  in  peaceful  council  and  in  the  barbari- 
ties of  his  warfare,  asked  the  white  man,  "  Why  will  you 
not  leave  us  to  ourselves  ?  The  Great  Spirit  once  divided 
us  by  the  ocean ;  having  crossed  that,  nothing  stops  your 
pathway."  Yet  we  press  and  crowd  them ;  it  is  the  pre- 


ATTRACTIONS   OP  SAVAGERY.  591 

rogative  of  civilization  to  do  so.  Indeed,  we  tell  them  that 
we  prefer  to  have  them  as  deadly  enemies  than  as  neigh- 
bors, unless  they  will  become  civilized.  And  what  pre- 
cisely do  we  mean  by  civilization  as  applied  to  them  ? 

Roman  Catholic  and  Protestant  missionaries  have,  as  we 
have  noticed,  in  all  cases  and  in  all  their  fields  of  labor 
among  our  Indians,  differed  radically  and  widely  as  to  the 
character,  quality,  degree,  and  desirable  ends  of  the  sort 
of  civilization  which  is  to  be  aimed  for,  which  is  possible, 
of  which  the  Indians  might  be  capable,  which  they  might 
be  willing  to  comply  with,  and  which  ought  to  satisfy  the 
whites.  One  of  the  most  interesting  and  (so  to  speak) 
successful,  and  one  of  the  most  contented  and  happy,  of  the 
Indian  missionaries  of  our  own  times,  before  mentioned, 
has  been  the  excellent  Jesuit  Father  De  Smet,  for  more 
than  a  score  of  years  roaming  with  and  teaching  the  Flat 
Heads  and  other  tribes  between  the  Missouri  and  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  Oregon,  and  the  Columbia  River.  Our  Govern- 
ment has  employed  him  as  chaplain  and  peace-maker  under 
General  Harney.  His  reports  and  sketches  present  him  to 
us  as  a  man  of  infantile  simplicity  and  guilelessness  of  heart, 
but  a  hero  in  zeal  and  spirit.  He  is  so  charmed  with  the 
docility  and  piety  of  his  wild  flock  in  their  observance  of 
his  religious  ceremonies  that  he  gushes  fondly  over  their 
full  discipleship,  and  actually  compares  them  to  the  primi- 
tive Christians.  Yet  there  is  among  them  no  other  very 
evident  token  of  civilized  ways.  Doubtless  he  would  say 
that  they  had  all  that  was  desirable  for  them  in  civilization ; 
for  what  is  civilization? 

The  main,  the  indispensable  conditions  of  civilization  are 
knowledge,  art,  and  law.  But  these  three  great  qualities 
and  characteristics  of  an  advanced  social  state  are  matters 
of  degree,  of  more  or  less,  of  higher  or  lower.  The  Indian 
uses  the  knowledge  that  he  has,  and  gets  more  as  soon  as 
he  becomes  aware  of  his  ignorance.  His  art  is  adjusted  to 
his  needs,  his  uses,  his  materials,  and  resources.  Usages, 


592  THE  INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION* 

for  him,  take  the  place  of  laws ;  and  he  is,  in  a  very  posi- 
tive and  practical  sense,  a  law  to  himself.  The  very  first 
and  strongest  impulse  towards  progressive  civilization  which 
might  be  expected  to  manifest  itself  among  savages  who  had 
partaken  of  some  preparatory  facilities  and  advantages  from 
it  would  be  naturally  a  craving  for,  an  impatience  to  enjoy, 
more.  But  when  these  primary  helps  are  at  once  accepted, 
and  any  further  advances  are  stolidly  and  resolutely  rejected, 
we  are  prompted  to  seek  an  explanation  of  the  well-known 
fact.  For  it  is  a  matter  of  curious  observation  that  some 
instinctive  impulse  or  fixed  principle  in  the  nature  of  a  sav- 
age will  lead  him  to  make  a  ready  selection  between  such 
tokens  or  implements  of  civilization  as  at  once  win  his  ap- 
proval and  those  which  he  rejects  with  indifference,  disdain, 
or  aversion. 

The  term  "  civilization "  and  the  state  which  it  de- 
scribes are,  both  of  them,  wholly  arbitrary.  It  involves  a 
question  not  only  of  more  or  less  in  its  conditions,  but  of 
varieties  in  its  type.  There  are  various  forms  of  civiliza- 
tion,—  the  Oriental  and  the  Western,  the  Asiatic  and  the 
European.  The  rudest  boors  may  not  be  without  its  range  ; 
and  the  excesses  of  luxury,  conventionality,  and  ceremony 
in  courtly  circles  prompt  the  use  of  the  word  "  artificial " 
for  the  most  advanced  range  of  society.  To  the  refined  and 
cultivated  the  word  "  civilization  "  includes  the  conditions 
and  surroundings  and  appliances  of  a  finished  elegance.  To 
humble  peasants,  with  rude  and  frugal  and  uncouth  ways, 
civilization  is  not  only  possible  but  actual,  as  it  may  centre 
in  their  own  fine  feelings  and  good  customs,  independently 
of  any  lack  or  roughness  in  their  surroundings.  How  arbi- 
trarily the  terms  required  for  defining  a  state  of  civilization 
are  used,  may  be  noticed  by  a  traveller  or  sojourner  as  he 
passes  from  a  city  to  a  rural,  and  then  a  frontier  life,  then 
to  a  forest  camp,  and  then  to  the  wild  woods.  He  will  be 
apt  to  say,  at  an  early  stage  of  his  course,  that  he  has  got 
beyond  the  limits  of  civilization,  and  that  he  has  fallen 


ARBITRARY   CIVILIZATION.  593 

among  men  and  women  whose  ways  and  habits  are  uncivil- 
ized. Amusing  measurements  and  estimates  have  been 
drawn  by  some  amateur  travellers  and  adventurers,  as  if 
they  had  a  scale  of  degrees  towards  the  vanishing  line  of 
civilization  ;  as,  for  instance,  from  one  of  our  seaboard 
cities  to  the  distant  West.  They  measure  and  judge  by 
the  gradual  disuse  of,  or  the  dispensing  with,  the  appli- 
ances, conveniences,  usages,  manners,  and  decencies  of 
civilized  life.  They  mark  on  their  scale  the  last  hotel 
where  boots  are  blacked,  the  last  stage  where  white  clothes 
are  worn  and  washed,  where  people  eat  with  knives  and 
forks,  where  there  comes  into  service  one  common  wash- 
bowl and  towel,  comb  and  brush ;  and  then  the  stage  where 
one  takes  leave  of  these,  exchanging  crockery  for  a  tin 
plate,  and  then  for  a  chip,  and  the  sole  occupancy  of  a  bed 
for  bunking  in  groups  or  sleeping  on  skins  in  shanty,  tent, 
or  on  the  grass.  Yet  a  group  of  civilized  men  and  women 
might  pass  through  all  these  vanishing  appliances  and 
decencies,  and  be  forced  to  live  henceforward  in  the  lack  of 
them,  and  still  be  civilized. 

Our  civilization  is  European,  for  that  is  our  standard. 
It  is  of  a  peculiar  elementary  composition,  and  it  bears  the 
stamp  and  impress  of  centuries  of  development,  in  which 
the  wilfulness,  the  idiosyncrasies,  and  the  eccentricities  of 
individuals  have  all  been  put  into  solution,  tempered, 
restrained,  and  adjusted  to  a  common  average  conven- 
tionalism. 

When  our  European  form  of  civilization,  in  its  details 
and  completeness,  has  been  offered  to  the  East  Indians  and 
the  Turks,  they  do  not  adopt  it.  They  prefer  their  own, 
which,  so  far  as  it  differs  from  ours,  is  in  our  opinion  so 
far  lacking  in  civilization. 

These  suggestions  may  lead  us  to  modify  our  expecta- 
tions and  demands  as  to  the  form  and  quality  of  the  civili- 
zation which  we  may  expect  or  exact  of  Indians.  They 
must  recognize,  and  then  appreciate,  the  nature  and  recom- 

3d 


594  THE  INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

mendations  of  the  change  in  their  habits  which  we  require 
of  them.  Yet,  while  we  admit  that  free-will,  desire,  and 
effort  are  essential  on  their  part  to  their  accepting  civil- 
ized ways,  we  must  not  go  so  far  as  to  consent  to  dispense 
on  our  part  with  the  use  of  constraint  and  force.  The 
natural  propensity  of  an  Indian  is  to  make  himself  more 
and  more  an  Indian.  He  eats  raw  and  bloody  meat  and 
entrails  to  stimulate  his  ferocity.  He  tortures  himself, 
that  he  may  enforce  his  daring  and  his  power  of  enduring 
inflicted  torture.  He  boasts  and  raves  at  the  council-fire 
of  his  brutal  and  fiendish  exploits.  There  are  remnants 
of  the  six  savage  tribes  which  for  nearly  two  hundred  years, 
in  the  very  heart  of  the  State  of  New  York,  have  preserved 
all  the  wild  and  heathen  traits  of  their  race,  in  spite  of  a 
considerable  modification  of  nature  among  a  part  of  them. 

In  the  course  of  remark  which  is  now  to  be  followed  let 
it  be  understood  and  allowed  for  at  the  start,  that  there 
are  humane  and  hopeful  friends  of  the  Indians,  philanthro- 
pists, earnest  advocates  of  the  peace  policy  towards  them, 
who  strongly  dissent  from  the  views  and  the  conclusions  to 
be  stated  here,  frankly  even  if  offensively,  as  those  of  the 
vast  majority  among  us.  The  dissent  of  the  minority  from 
these  generally  prevailing  views  and  conclusions,  and  the 
grounds  of  the  dissent  shall  not  fail  of  recognition  by- 
and-by.  Doubtless  there  will  be  those  who  will  object  to 
having  set  before  them  what  they  will  pronounce  to  be  the 
cruel  and  hateful  judgment  of  inhuman  persons  who  fore- 
doom the  Indians  to  extinction.  But  this  aversion  will 
indicate  ignorance  and  prejudice,  which  do  not  desire  real 
information  as  to  opinions  actually  held  by  others. 

If  I  am  competent  to  infer  from  the  mass  of  what  I 
have  read,  the  consenting  opinion  and  judgment  of  the 
very  large  majority  of  men  of  actual  knowledge  and  prac- 
tical experience  of  the  mature  Indians  is  that  they  cannot 
be  civilized,—  that  the  race  must  perish  either  by  violence 
or  decay.  The  final  catastrophe,  it  is  said,  has  been  forecast, 


RESISTANCE   TO    CIVILIZATION.  595 

prepared  for,  and  is  steadily  advancing  to  its  dismal  close. 
Often  have  we  had  presented  to  us  in  the  pathetic  rhetoric 
of  the  orator,  the  well-wrought  verse  of  the  poet,  and  the 
sad-colored  canvas  of  the  painter,  the  vision  of  "  the  last 
Indian  jumping  into  eternity  towards  the  setting  sun." 
The  only  qualification,  and  that  grudgingly  and  feebly  ut- 
tered, of  the  certainty  and  sweep  of  this  fate  is  that  there 
may  be  a  remnant  left,  of  a  degraded  and  enervated  kin- 
ship, representing  not  the  Indian,  but  a  poor  specimen  of 
humanity. 

In  a  few  years  hence  we  are  told  that  our  aborigines  can 
be  studied  only  by  their  skulls  in  our  museums.  The  basis 
of  this  conviction  as  to  the  fate  of  the  Indian  is  that  he 
cannot  be  civilized,  and  that  he  cannot  exist  in  contact  with 
civilization.  This  belief,  it  is  insisted,  has  been  fairly  and 
decisively  reached,  as  the  result  of  full  experiment  and 
experience.  More  than  this  is  urged.  For  we  are  re- 
minded that  this  assurance  that  the  Indian  cannot  be  civ- 
ilized is  not  a  prejudgment,  not  a  bias  against  him  from 
the  first,  not  a  resource  for  excusing,  justifying,  or  com- 
forting ourselves  under  the  compunctions  for  our  wrong 
treatment  of  the  Indians.  On  the  contrary,  the  belief,  it  is 
said,  has  been  forced  on  us  against  our  wills,  against  actual 
prejudgments  on  the  other  side,  and  comes  to  us  certified 
and  sadly  and  disappointingly  confirmed  by  the  thwarting 
of  all  our  best  and  most  patient  and  costly  labors  and 
efforts  in  behalf  of  the  race.  There  once  were  hopeful- 
ness, earnestness,  enthusiasm,  lofty  expectations  of  what 
might  be  done  and  realized  by  reclaiming,  civilizing,  ed- 
ucating, and  Christianizing  the  noble  savage.  The  most 
heroic  and  holy  zeal  of  saintly  men  and  women,  the  ingen- 
ious schemes  and  devices  of  benevolent  souls  and  societies, 
have  gone  into  the  work,  with  the  combined  efforts  and 
treasures  of  Government.  And  all  in  vain. 

So  the  conviction  which  dooms  the  Indian  claims  to  be 
supported  by  full  experimental,  largely  varied,  and  multi- 


596  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

plied  efforts  for  him,  all  thwarted ;  and  it  is  also  said  to 
have  forced  itself  upon  candid  and  disappointed  minds  as  a 
substitute  for  quite  a  different  hope  and  belief  about  him. 
Searched  down  to  its  roots,  this  conviction  plants  itself  on 
the  assertion  that  there  is  in  the  heredity  and  the  organiza- 
tion and  birth-type  of  an  Indian,  in  his  tissue  and  fibre,  in 
his  elementary  make-up,  in  his  aptitudes,  limitations,  disa- 
bilities, proclivities,  and  drift  of  nature,  a  constitution  which 
assigns  him  to  savagism,  and  bars  his  transformation  to  a 
civilized  state.  In  these  respects  he  has  qualities  inherent, 
congenital,  ineradicable,  answering  to  those  respectively  of 
stock  animals  in  the  field  and  wild  animals  in  the  jungle ; 
qualities  like  those  which  are  specific  and  distinctive  be- 
tween fruit  and  forest  trees,  wild  shrubs  and  berries,  which 
lose  their  flavor  under  cultivation.  The  principles  and  the 
subtlest  methods  of  physiological  science  are  drawn  upon 
to  illustrate  and  account  for  this  congenital  quality  of  the 
Indian.  There  goes  with  the  black  hair,  the  high  cheek 
bones,  the  tinted  skin,  the  germinal  cell  and  tissue  of  the 
race,  an  impregnated  destiny  in  development  which  perpet- 
uates itself  in  all  generations. 

"  The  Indian  naturally  detests  civilization,"  is  the  gen- 
eral and  emphatic  statement  of  those  who  have  authority 
to  utter  positive  opinions  on  the  subject.  The  statement 
may  be  admitted  as  fully  warranting  the  belief,  that,  while 
the  barbaric  and  savage  element  is  predominant  in  an  Ind- 
ian, he  will  hate  and  fret  against  civilization. 

I  will  begin  by  admitting  that  the  Indian  yields  to,  and 
has  reasons  for,  this  hostility.  And  we  may  be  sure  of 
this,  too,  that  the  better  acquainted  a  wild  Indian  became 
with  our  civilization,  the  more  he  would  detest  it.  If  the 
Indian  could  learn  and  see  and  know  the  secrets  and 
shadows  of  a  civilized  state,  in  crowded  cities  and  close 
communities,  the  less  would  he  feel  inclined  to  prefer  it 
to  his  own  tribal  forest  life. 

We  are  apt  quietly  to  take  for  granted  not  only  what  is 


NATURE   AND   CONVENTIONALISM.  597 

most  true,  —  the  immense  preponderance  in  gain  and  good 
of  every  kind  in  a  highly  civilized  state  over  barbaric  life 
in  the  wild  woods,  —  but  also  to  infer  an  absolute,  com- 
plete, and  exclusive  blessing  in  the  former.  But  civiliza- 
tion is  not  all  gain  and  blessing,  certainly  not  to  every  one 
living  under  it.  An  intelligent  and  able  reasoner  might 
keep  himself  within  the  most  rigid  conditions  of  sober 
truth  and  full  experience  in  arguing  for  this  plain  state- 
ment :  that  it  is  the  direct  tendency  of  our  form  of  civili- 
zation to  carry  human  beings  towards  one  extreme  as  far 
beyond  the  simple  elements  of  happiness  and  every  form 
of  good  as  savage  life  falls  short  of  them.  We  may  leave 
fancy  idealists  to  attempt  to  prove,  with  Rousseau,  that  the 
savage  state  is  the  natural  and  preferable  state  for  man ; 
but  we  must  allow  the  drawbacks  of  civilization,  —  espe- 
cially such  as  to  an  Indian  would  be  most  odious,  —  to  the 
estimates  and  habits  of  even  a  remarkably  enlightened 
savage.  Unable  as  such  a  savage  would  be  to  off-set  the 
obvious  evils  and  blights  of  civilization  by  a  deep  inner 
discernment  and  appreciation  of  its  sum  of  blessings,  he 
might  even  be  moved  to  plead  earnestly  with  us  to  induce 
us  to  revert  to  the  state  of  Nature.  Civilization,  in  every 
example  of  it  as  yet  ever  known  in  the  world's  history, 
has  always  involved,  for  a  portion  of  every  community,  ig- 
norance, subjection,  poverty,  and  repulsive  menial  services. 
And  though  the  highest  class  in  advancement,  intelligence, 
culture,  refinement,  and  virtue  are  the  salt  and  salvation 
of  the  whole  community,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  decide 
whether  civilization  could  more  safely  part  with  its  most 
privileged  or  its  most  humble  class.  Of  course  in  his  stage 
and  by  his  standard  of  intelligence  the  savage  would  make 
his  estimates  by  contrast,  would  compare  what  he  sees  of 
the  aspects  and  habits  of  civilization  with  his  own  wonted 
views  and  ways.  With  him  all  that  he  needs  for  life,  occu- 
pation, resource,  subsistence,  is  wholly  free,  —  all  at  large, 
unclaimed,  not  even  to  be  labored  for,  save  for  such  effort 


598  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION-. 

and  motion  as  in  hunting,  which  is  a  form  of  pleasure. 
He  goes  to  his  free  market  in  the  wilderness  for  all  sup- 
plies, as  the  thrifty  farm-wife  goes  to  hunt  eggs  in  the 
hay-loft.  But  in  civilization  he  finds  food,  clothing,  fuel, 
dwelling,  even  air  and  water,  all  claimed  as  owned  by  some- 
body, and  all  under  cost.  The  rows  of  shops  amaze  him. 
There  is  so  much  to  be  sold,  so  many  sellers  and  so  many 
buyers,  and  there  is  so  much  mysterious  virtue  in  the  cur- 
rent coin,  and  the  way  of  getting  it,  and  the  embarrassment 
of  being  without  it.  The  policemen,  to  say  nothing  of 
lawyers,  are  another  bewilderment.  The  paraphernalia  of 
wealth  and  the  miseries  of  poverty  are  equally  amazing  to 
him.  In  his  own  home  and  surroundings,  as  we  have  said, 
the  Indian  needs  free  acres,  a  generous  expanse  of  say  four 
square  miles  for  his  way  of  life.  The  densest  region  in 
London  has  175,000  human  beings  in  one  square  mile,  and 
on  the  same  area  in  the  Fourth  Ward  of  New  York  it  is 
reported  that  290,000  are  crowded  together.  And  what 
would  the  Indian  say  to  an  exchange  of  residences  ?  What, 
too,  about  the  hospitals,  the  court  houses,  the  penitentia- 
ries, the  jails  of  our  communities  ?  There  may  be  heart- 
aches and  woes  in  savage  life.  But  what  are  they  to  the 
crushing  miseries,  the  despairing  burdens,  the  intolerable 
loads  of  wretchedness  which  are  directly  generated  by  the 
sterner  conditions  of  life  in  crowded  communities. 

During  the  period  of  French  colonization  in  Canada  the 
return  ships  often  took  to  France  many  Indians.  Some  of 
them,  after  sight  and  knowledge  of  civilized  scenes,  ways, 
and  pleasures,  were  brought  back  to  Canada.  They  may 
be  regarded  as  competent  judges  and  critics  as  we  could 
have  for  comparing  by  experience  and  natural  preferences 
the  two  states,  wild  and  civilized.  In  every  case  their  deci- 
sion was  for  their  own  mode  of  life.  La  Hontan  follows 
interviews  of  this  sort  with  travelled  and  returned  savages 
into  details,  and  he  makes  them  keen  and  able  pleaders  for 
the  savage  state,  sharp  critics  of  the  slavery  and  drudg- 


ENFORCED   CIVILIZATION.  599 

ery  of  civilization,  of  the  greed  of  money,  of  class  dis- 
tinctions, of  social  rivalry,  of  avarice,  family  quarrels, 
rebellious  and  dissipated  children,  false  estimates  of  true 
manhood.  La  Hontan,  it  is  true,  was  a  volatile  romancer ; 
but  if  he  personated  both  parties  in  his  dialogues,  he  used 
very  pertinent  and  forcible  pleas  consistent  with  either 
party  in  the  conferences.  We  shall  read  before  we  close 
this  chapter  some  veritable  judgments  pronounced  by  sav- 
ages, giving  us  the  grounds  of  their  preference  of  their 
own  way  of  life. 

The  discouraging  view  of  the  whole  problem  presented 
in  the  failure  thus  far  of  all  attempts  to  bring  the  Indian 
race  under  civilization  has  been  stated  in  its  full  force, 
with  all  the  facts  and  evidence  by  which  it  is  supported. 
Are  we,  therefore,  to  accept  it,  to  acquiesce  in  it,  and  so 
to  look  only  to  the  decay,  the  wasting  away,  the  extinc- 
tion of  the  original  occupants  of  this  continent  as  an 
inevitable  decree  of  fate  ? 

It  would  be  fatal  to  the  interests  and  prospects  of  hu- 
manity, it  would  discredit  the  quality  and  work  of  our 
own  civilization,  if  we  should  commit  ourselves  to  that 
forlorn  conclusion.  However  discouraging,  or,  as  some 
may  say,  hopeless,  quixotic,  and  even  absurd,  the  attempt 
may  be,  we  are  bound  to  plan  and  act  and  labor  as  if  we 
were  sure  of  success  in  the  purpose  that  in  years  to  come 
the  Indian  race  shall  be  represented  here  in  blood  and 
vigor  by  an  element  in  our  most  advanced  civilization. 
We  are  not  to  recognize  failure.  We  are  to  refer  all  our 
discomfitures  to  our  own  blunders,  and  to  institute  a  new 
trial  with  all  the  hopefulness  which  belongs  to  a  first  one. 
If  all  the  forces  of  our  own  civilization  and  Christianity, 
backed  by  the  pleadings  and  helps  of  a  common  humanity, 
cannot  compass  the  reclaiming  and  uplifting  from  barbar- 
ism of  an  issue  from  the  Indian  stock,  we  may  well  own 
ourselves  humbled.  We  may  ask  whether  we  are  likely  to 
perpetuate  our  own  civilization,  if  we  have  not  the  power 


600  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

to  impart  and  extend  it.  Cannot  civilization  civilize  ?  If 
it  be  a  severely  hard  task  to  impart  civilization  to  a  wild 
race,  let  us  remember  what  a  constant  struggle  and  effort, 
with  all  ingenious  and  complicated  appliances,  are  needed 
in  order  that  we  may  keep  our  civilization.  A  civilized 
community,  apprehending  its  fearful  risks  and  perils,  does 
not  grudge  the  task  and  toil,  the  watchfulness  and  the  anx- 
iety needful  to  perpetuate  it.  Is  it  much  harder  to  in- 
crease and  extend  it  than  it  is  to  preserve  what  we  have  ? 
Nor  must  we  be  disheartened  or  borne  down  by  the  tone  of 
ridicule  which  may  be  used  in  the  way  of  presenting  our 
own  Government  with  all  grave  tasks  of  administration  for 
our  own  people,  in  its  home  and  foreign  relations,  as  as- 
suming the  training  and  educating  in  all  forms  of  industry 
of  a  horde  of  savages.  There  will  be  more  loss  of  honor 
and  dignity  to  our  country  —  vastly  more  of  demoraliza- 
tion and  peril  —  to  be  risked  in  looking  on,  even  indiffer- 
ently and  without  actually  aiding  in  the  process,  as  an 
aboriginal  race  comes  to  extinction  before  our  eyes. 

The  opportunities,  inducements,  and  facilities  which  have 
been  offered  to  the  Indian  for  accepting  civilization,  and 
which  have  always  so  pointedly  failed  to  win  him  to  it,  de- 
serve notice  here,  for  they  have  much  significance.  When 
a  group  of  wild  chieftains  and  braves  from  the  forests  or 
the  Western  plains  has  been  guided  through  our  civilized 
country  to  hold  a  talk  with  the  President  at  Washington 
and  to  be  made  spectacles  of  in  our  cities,  they  may  well 
have  been  dazed,  confounded,  appalled,  by  the  full  signifi- 
cance of  civilization,  and  utterly  bereft  of  any  sense  of  ca- 
pacity or  desire  for  what  is  so  hopelessly  out  of  their  reach, 
so  contrasted  with  their  own  rude  ways.  The  panting 
steamer,  the  thundering  locomotive  by  which  they  make 
stages  of  their  route,  the  ingenious,  complicated,  and  cum- 
brous devices  of  the  white  man,  his  refined  habits  of  dress 
and  eating,  the  noisy  pavements,  the  crowded  shops  and 
ware-houses,  the  thick  throng  of  the  streets,  the  varied  in- 


STAGES   OF  PROGRESS.  601 

dustries,  the  sometimes  repulsive  tasks,  the  rush  and  tur- 
moil and  fever  of  life,  may  so  overwhelm  and  distract  the 
savage  as  to  persuade  him  that  civilization  is  not  for  him 
either  to  accomplish  or  to  share,  and,  like  all  of  his  race 
who  have  .come  on  such  errands  and  seen  such  sights,  he 
longs  to  get  back  to  the  woods  again.  If  the  Indians  were 
not  radically  unlike  the  white  man  in  the  matter  of  curios- 
ity and  speculation,  the  report  by  these  braves  on  their  re- 
turn to  their  tribes  of  what  they  had  seen  in  their  strange 
journeyings  would  cause  a  rush  of  most  of  the  men  and 
women  too  into  our  cities,  such  as  would  appall  us.  Yet 
the  returned  visitors  excite  no  such  curiosity,  nor  do 
the  white  man's  ways  raise  discontent  or  jealousy  in  the 
description. 

But  it  is  not  in  this  overwhelming,  distracting  way  that 
civilization  from  the  first  and  always  has  offered  its  induce- 
ments, attractions,  and  facilities  to  the  Indians.  It  has 
presented  itself  to  them  in  its  simpler,  more  facile,  and 
elementary  forms  and  methods.  The  first  European  colo- 
nization here  in  patches  of  the  wilderness,  and  in  each  suc- 
cessive stage  of  its  advance  through  our  inner  belts  and 
borders,  was  made  by  men  who,  save  that  they  had  with 
them  a  few  tools  and  implements,  were  in  all  outward  re- 
spects very  much  on  a  level  with  the  Indians  themselves 
as  to  conditions,  circumstances,  and  means  of  life.  The 
Indians  first  saw  civilization  in  its  inchoate,  elemental  sta- 
ges. The  early  white  settlers  were  glad  even  to  help  out 
their  wardrobes  with  the  skins  which  the  Indian  wore ;  to 
learn  from  him  how  to  plant  and  dress  corn,  how  to  hunt 
and  trap,  how  to  penetrate  the  wilderness  and  to  make 
themselves  comfortable.  The  Indian  had,  and  has  had, 
continually  before  him  the  examples  of  poor,  rude  white 
men  and  women,  amid  the  simplest,  the  earliest,  and  the 
roughest  processes  of  civilization ;  not  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
in  ceiled  houses,  costly  apparel,  with  servants  and  equipa- 
ges, with  furnished  kitchens  and  luxurious  tables,  but  plain 


602  THE  INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

yeomanry,  getting  used  to  wilderness  life  before  they  could 
secure  a  single  means  for  a  better  one.  The  first  cabins  of 
the  whites  were  no  better  than  those  of  the  Indian ;  their 
food,  their  drink,  fire,  exposure  to  all  risks  were  the  same, 
save,  as  has  been  said,  that  the  white  man  had  a  few  metal 
tools  and  implements,  not  forgetting,  however,  that  he  had 
also  something  in  his  skull,  and  in  his  Saxon  spirit,  which 
the  Indian  had  not. 

The  Indian  witnessed,  wondered  over,  or  was  disgusted 
by  every  successive  act  by  which  the  white  man,  as  we  say, 
improved  his  condition.  He  saw  him  cut  down  trees  and 
build  a  lodge :  the  Indian  had  seen  the  beavers  do  that, 
and  build  a  dam  over  a  water-course  beside.  The  Indian 
saw  the  white  man  cut  down  more  trees,  make  a  clearing 
for  planting  and  fencing,  using  boards  and  timber  for  his 
second  house  instead  of  bark.  Then  came  the  saw-mill 
and  the  grist-mill.  Then  a  brood  of  chickens  appeared 
around  the  shanty ;  then  the  cow,  which  had  a  strange  re- 
semblance to  the  familiar  buffalo,  save  that  milk  and  butter 
came  from  her,  which  the  Indians  might  have  got  from  the 
buffalo,  but  had  not  thought  of.  Then  the  Indian  saw  the 
white  man  using  salt  for  preserving  food,  which  he  had 
never  done.  And  day  by  day,  and  year  by  year,  as  the  sav- 
age visited  the  white  man's  cabin  or  framed  house,  his 
fenced  fields  and  flower-gardens,  he  saw  something  new 
and  cunning  and  useful,  not  costly,  nor  ostentatious,  nor 
intricate,  nor  perplexing,  but  simple,  contrived,  adapted  to 
make  more  out  of  everything  than  the  savage  had  done. 
So  tentative,  elemental,  and  easy  of  imitation  have  been  the 
signs  and  processes  by  which  civilization  has  offered  itself 
to  our  Indians  on  the  frontiers  for  nearly  three  hundred 
years. 

And  what  has  been  the  effect  on  the  savages  of  these 
seemingly  prompting,  soliciting,  tempting,  we  might  even 
say  provoking,  examples,  —  silent,  winning,  and  simple  les- 
sons, —  given  him  by  the  white  man  ?  The  effect  has  been 


DISAPPOINTMENTS   AND   FAILURES.  603 

almost  entirely  the  direct  opposite  of  what  we  should  have 
looked  for.  Beads,  needles,  trinkets,  very  soon  became  ob- 
jects of  desire  by  the  squaws.  The  white  man's  gun  and 
knife  and  metal  kettle,  his  fire-water  and  his  horse  and  his 
woollen  blanket,  had  the  same  attraction  for  the  wild  war- 
rior. But  as  to  everything  done  or  gained  by  the  white 
man  which  required  industry,  toil,  labor,  he  would  have 
none  of  it,  —  the  thing  was  not  worth  its  cost.  He  looked 
on  with  a  contempt  which  smothered  his  curiosity.  The 
white  man  was  a  squaw.  Perhaps  the  noblest  thing  that 
can  be  said  of  an  Indian  is  that  he  never  could  be  made 
into  a  slave.  But  the  most  discouraging  thing  about  him 
is  his  enslaving  himself  to  himself. 

Admitting  the  generally  asserted  and  acknowledged  fact 
that  the  Indian  has  so  often,  if  not  in  all  cases,  so  dismally 
disappointed  the  expectations  of  what  he  would  or  might 
be  as  the  result  of  efforts  made  in  his  behalf  under  some 
processes  and  stages  of  civilization,  the  fact  may  help  us  to 
form  more  correct  views  of  his  actual  place  on  the  scale 
of  humanity  and  of  his  natural  endowments.  Much  of  our 
disappointment  over  the  failure  of  efforts  for  him  may  be 
accounted  to  the  fancy  into  which  we  had  been  led  by 
previous  false  estimates  of  his  latent  nature,  —  to  imagine 
that  under  the  limitations  and  disablings  of  his  wilderness 
growth  there  was  a  nobleness  of  being,  a  wealth  of  innate 
and  repressed  capacity ;  that  he  was  at  the  core  and  poten- 
tially a  high  type  of  man.  We  knew  that  he  had  the  vir- 
tues of  self-reliance,  pride  of  nature,  high  self-estimate, 
courage,  fortitude,  and  a  command,  of  the  resources  of  the 
forest  and  the  wilderness.  These  qualities  we  regarded  as 
similar  to  those  presented  by  the  unsightly  and  rude  ores 
in  our  mines,  in  our  varied  minerals,  and  in  the  woods  of 
our  forests,  —  admitting  through  the  smelting  process,  the 
grinding,  the  polishing,  the  tempering,  and  the  cunning 
work  of  hand  and  brain,  of  being  turned  to  grand  and 
varied  products  of  use  and  beauty.  So  we  thought  that 


604  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

the  man  of  the  wilderness  would,  within  his  range,  develop 
his  wealth  and  capacity  of  being  under  training,  example, 
and  civilization.  He  would  give  us  a  new  style  of  man,  — 
one  born  for  something  better  than  mere  toil,  whose  con- 
ceit or  pride  would  turn  to  real  dignity,  and  whose  acute 
and  cunning  instincts  would  avail  for  high  and  keen  in- 
sight, intelligence,  art,  and  science. 

So  it  has  not  proved.  The  savage  is  really  a  nobler,  a 
more  impressive,  a  more  interesting,  and  (so  to  speak)  a 
more  capable  being  in  his  native  than  in  his  civilized  state. 
He  does  not  gain  by  civilization  :  he  loses  by  it.  The  very 
nobleness  which  shows  in  him  in  the  woods,  his  reserve, 
his  taciturnity,  his  suppression  of  feeling, —  all  disappear 
under  social  subjection  to  white  men.  His  mental  gaze, 
which  seemed  to  be  withdrawn  or  concentrated,  now  seems 
wholly  vacant  and  disappears.  His  special  faculties  and 
aptitudes  fail  because  he  has  no  use  for  them.  He  despises 
what  we  estimate  most  highly.  Our  appliances  and  com- 
forts are  a  fret  and  torment  to  him.  He  generally  becomes 
abject  and  mean,  like  the  beast  of  the  woods  or  the  jungle 
in  a  menagerie. 

There  is  a  remnant,  a  trace,  of  savagery  —  sometimes 
even  a  very  large  and  positive  ingredient  of  it  —  actively 
present  in  individual  persons  under  the  highest  civilization. 
In  this  respect,  after  all  that  the  elevating  and  refining 
influences  which,  through  generations  struggling  upward 
from  barbarism,  have  done  to  remove  us  from  primitive 
rudeness,  we  none  the  less  may  find  a  parallel  in  some  of 
our  surviving  instincts  and  propensities  to  manifestations 
observable  in  tamed  and  domesticated  animals.  Squirrels, 
birds,  and  many  other  pets,  born  and  hatched  in  their 
cages,  are  seen  to  do  things  which  would  be  perfectly  proper 
and  of  use  to  them  in  their  native,  free  state  which  are 
wholly  out  of  place,  aimless,  and  ridiculous  in  their  artifi- 
cial condition.  The  pet  dog  by  our  firesides  will  be  seen 
to  turn  himself  quickly  round  and  round  before  lying  down 


REVERSIONARY   INSTINCTS.  605 

on  the  soft  rug.  This  act  seems  to  come  from  a  reminis- 
cence of  an  ancestral  condition  under  which,  having  some- 
thing less  comfortable  than  a  rug  to  lie  upon,  he  had  to 
make  sure  of  a  tolerably  smooth  couch  by  circling  around 
it.  Many  and  significant  are  the  acts  and  promptings  of 
human  beings  —  ladies  and  gentlemen  —  which  Darwin 
would  tell  us  indicate  reversionary  tendencies  in  us. 

Very  much  more  might  be  suggested  on  this  point ; ' 
and  if  we  should  follow  up  the  hint  just  dropped  into  de- 
tails, it  would  open  for  us  matter  of  curious  interest.  One 
fact  bearing  closely  upon  it  may  in  the  mention  of  it  draw 
response  from  many  of  us.  What  healthful  boy,  born  in 
city  or  country,  has  ever  among  us  grown  to  manhood,  and 
then  lived  in  the  toil  and  hurry  and  restraint  of  civilization, 
without  feeling  at  some  time  the  reversionary  impulse  or 
instinct  towards  barbarism  in  the  form  of  a  wild,  free  life, 
— of  "  camping  out"  (as  it  is  called)  in  a  tent  in  the  woods 
or  the  meadow,  or  on  the  beach,  or  at  least  of  making  a 
fire  in  the  woods  ?  Year  by  year  this  impulse  manifests  it- 
self among  our  young  and  healthful  people,  and  even  poor, 
wasted  invalids*  are  drawn  by  it  to  bivouacs  in  the  Adiron- 
dack region.  One  or  more  generations  of  our  ancestors  in 
the  Old  World  were  born  and  nursed,  and  lived  and  were 
buried  in  the  wilderness.  Our  first  ancestors  on  this  soil 
were  compelled  to  conform  themselves  to  a  wilderness  life, 
and  some  of  its  conditions  passed  down  to  their  lineage. 
So  we  have  reversionary  instincts  for  it.  Hardy  and  enter- 
prising men  there  are  who  annually  visit  us  from  Europe 
(gentlemen,  nobles),  who,  well  aware  what  they  must  leave 
behind  them,  come  here  and  seek  the  farthest  wilds  of  the 
red  men,  in  rocky  fastnesses  or  in  valleys  amid  dreary 
plains,  and  conform  themselves  to  all  the  rough  and  re- 
pulsive and  filthy  conditions  of  life  among  the  Indians,  — 
in  clothing,  bed,  and  board,  in  the  tramp,  the  hunt,  the 
chase,  the  dreary  winter  desolation  with  the  thermometer 
deep  below  zero.  More  frequently  among  us  this  rever- 


606  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

sionary  instinct  stirs  a  couple  or  a  group  of  young  men, 
for  a  summer  change,  to  go  for  an  interval  into  some 
primitive  spot  and  try  to  live  awhile  as  the  Indians  lived, 
repudiating  the  effeminacies  of  civilization.  True,  there  is 
often  an  intrusion  of  that  ubiquitous  quality  which  we 
bluntly  call  "humbug"  in  these  restorations  of  savagery. 
I/If  we  looked  sharply  into  the  equipments  of  some  of  these 
camping-out  and  tenting  trampers,  we  should  detect  certain 
suspicious  appliances  which  the  Indians  never  carried  with 
them,  in  fact  never  had,  —  the  comfortable  India-rubber 
blanket,  for  dew  and  rain,  and  rest  on  the  damp  earth ;  the 
salt  and  other  condiments ;  the  pork  firkin,  the  canned 
meats,  and  certain  cases  which  need  to  be  "  handled  with 
care."  Yet  these  campers  —  perhaps  carrying  with  them 
the  works  of  their  patron  saint  Thoreau  —  persuade  them- 
selves that  they  have  got  nearer  to  the  lap  and  nursing 
bosom  of  Mother  Nature ;  that  they  like  game  flavors,  the 
smoky  smell  of  food  cooked  in  ashes,  to  see  the  sun  rise 
after  they  are  up*f  and  when  they  have  deigned  to  conform 
to  civilized  ways  again,  and  have  had  a  bath,  put  on  their 
"  store-clothes,"  and  lunched  at  some  luxurious  restaurant, 
they  will  tell  you  that "  the  Indians  do  not  have  such  a  bad 
time  of  it  after  all."  So  far  goes  the  reversionary  instinct 
of  civilized  man  back  to  barbarism.  An  occasional  draught 
of  milk  at  the  farmhouses  on  their  way  has  preserved  these 
campers-out  from  a  thorough  and  hopeless  relapse  to  sav- 
agery. If  from  exhaustion  under  the  fretting  tasks,  and 
sometimes  from  vexation  and  disgust  under  the  shams  and 
frivolities  of  conventional  life,  there  is  a  strange  zest  which 
might  even  be  prolonged  beyond  a  temporary  trial  in  this 
reversion  to  the  rude  simplicities  of  existence, ^we  cannot 
wonder  that  the  mature  savage  prefers  the  condition  into 
which  he  was  born.  ^ 

Much  to  the  point  it  is  in  connection  with  the  Indian's 
aversion  from  civilization  to  note  this  fact  of  which  the  evi- 
dence is  varied  and  abounding,  and  has  been  accumulating 


REVERSIONARY   INSTINCTS.  607 

for  three  centuries :  a  vastly  larger  number  of  white  men 
and  women  have  been  barbarized  by  contact  and  life  with 
the  Indians  than  there  ever  have  been  of  Indians  won  to 
civilized  ways.  The  tendency  of  single  white  persons  when 
living  for  any  considerable  time  with  the  Indians  to  con- 
form to  and  adopt  their  habits,  is  not  only  natural,  but 
often  unavoidable  and  irresistible.  Besides  the  charms  and 
license  of  release  from  all  conventionalities,  the  throwing 
off  of  all  artificial  and  galling  restraints,  the  very  necessi- 
ties of  the  case  compel  this  conformity.  Toilet  arrange- 
ments, garb,  dress,  food,  and  the  ways  of  cooking  and  eating 
it  are  matters  in  which  one  has  at  once  to  part  with  all 
squeamishness.  So  also  whether  sleep  be  found  in  the 
open  air,  or  round  the  camp-fire,  or  in  a  crowded  and  filthy 
lodge,  with  humanity,  dogs,  smoke,  and  vermin,  the  fron- 
tiersman, the  trapper  or  hunter,  already  used  to  rough 
and  coarse  ways,  becomes  very  soon  a  full  conformist. 
And  those  who  have  been  wonted  to  finer  and  cleanlier 
usages,  even  to  luxuries,  yield  to  the  influences  of  scene, 
condition,  and  company.  Our  own  army  officer,  Captain 
Bonneville,  who  found  in  Irving  a  sympathetic  editor  for 
his  journal  across  the  continent,  yielded  himself  to  this 
outburst :  — 

"  He  who  like  myself  has  roved  almost  from  boyhood  among  the 
children  of  the  forest,  and  over  the  unfurrowed  plains  and  rugged 
heights  of  the  Western  States,  will  not  be  startled  to  learn,  that, 
notwithstanding  all  the  fascinations  of  the  world  on  this  civilized 
side  of  the  mountains,  I  would  fain  make  my  bow  to  the  splendors 
and  gayeties  of  the  metropolis,  and  plunge  again  amidst  the  hard- 
ships of  the  wilderness." 

The  captain  and  others  try  to  persuade  us  that  there  are 
even  delicacies  in  Indian  cookery,  though  of  course  the 
wilderness  appetite  brought  to  them  is  a  stimulating  sauce. 
We  read  of  some  of  these  Rocky  Mountain  delicacies  to 
which  it  may  be  well  to  call  the  attention  of  our  city  epi- 


608  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

cures  and  caterers.  They  are  happily  for  the  most  part 
root-food,  such  as  the  kamask,  about  the  size  of  an  onion, 
said  to  be  delicious ;  the  courish,  or  biscuit-root,  the  size  of 
a  walnut,  and  which  is  reduced  to  flour;  the  jaekap,  the 
aisish,  the  quako,  etc.  , 

Instances  innumerable  there  are  on  record  from  the  pens 
of  cultivated  men,  who,  in  their  intercourse  with  the  Indians 
in  their  wild,  free  life,  became  so  fascinated  with  it  and 
perhaps  demoralized  by  its  license,  that  they  have  substan- 
tially avowed  with  Baron  La  Hontan,  "  The  manners  of 
the  savages  are  perfectly  agreeable  to  my  palate." 

The  Earl  of  Dunraven,  having  resided  with  the  Absa- 
ruka,  or  Crows,  presents  the  following  summary  of  his 
views  of  the  Indians  in  general :  — 

"  However  degrading  their  religion  may  be,  I  doubt  if  a  change 
ever  is  morally  beneficial  to  a  savage  race.  Konian  Catholicism  suits 
the  red  men  best,  with  its  spiritualism  in  some  respects  so  like 
their  own ;  its  festivals  and  fasts  at  stated  times,  resembling  their 
green-corn  dances  and  vigils  ;  with  its  prayers  and  intercessions  for 
the  dead,  its  ceremonial,  its  good  and  evil  spirits,  its  symbolism,  its 
oblations,  its  little  saints  and  medals.  The  red  Indian  does  not 
see  such  a  great  difference  between  the  priest  and  the  medicine- 
man. It  is  a  difference  of  degree,  not  of  kind ;  and,  if  backed  by 
a  little  pork  and  flour,  he  is  apt  to  look  upon  the  cross  and  medal 
as  greater  talismans  than  claws  of  beasts  and  bits  of  rag  and  skin, 
and  to  think  that  the  missionary  makes  stronger  medicine  than  his 
priest.  The  dry,  cold  philosophy  of  the  Methodist  finds  little 
favor  with  an  imaginative  race  worshipping  the  Great  Spirit  in  the 
elements  and  in  all  the  forms  and  forces  of  Nature ;  thanking  the 
Principle  of  Good  for  success  in  hunting  and  in  war ;  propitiating 
the  Evil  Principle  that  brings  the  deep  snows,  ice,  fever,  starvation, 
shadows  of  the  night,  thunder-storms,  and  ghosts.  To  the  Indian's 
mind  there  is  nothing  intrinsically  good  or  desirable  in  the  doc- 
trines of  the  various  Christian  sects  ;  nor  is  there  anything  what- 
ever in  our  mode  of  living  or  in  our  boasted  civilization  to  pre- 
possess him  in  favor  of  the  religion  of  the  white  race.  These  red- 
skinned  savages  have  no  respect  whatever  for  the  pale  faces, — 
men  whose  thoughts,  feelings,  occupations,  and  pastimes  are  en- 


PLEAS   FOR  SAVAGERY.  609 

tirely  at  variance  with  their  own.  Aliens  they  are  to  us  in  almost 
all  things.  Their  thoughts  run  in  a  different  channel ;  they  are 
guided  so  much  more  by  instinct  than  by  reasoning.  They  have 
a  code  of  morals  and  of  honor  differing  most  materially  from  ours. 
They  attach  importance  to  matters  so  trifling  in  our  eyes,  are  grati- 
fied or  offended  by  such  insignificant  details,  are  guided  through 
life  by  rules  so  much  at  variance  with  our  established  methods, 
that  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  foresee  what,  under  particular  circum- 
stances, their  conduct  will  be.  They  are  influenced  by  feelings 
and  passions  which  we  do  not  in  the  least  understand,  and  cannot 
therefore  appreciate.  They  show  reverence  to  superstitions  and 
religious  ceremonies  which  we,  knowing  nothing  whatever  about 
them,  declare  at  once  to  be  utterly  foolish  and  absurd ;  and  they 
attach  much  importance  to  observances  which  seem  to  us  almost 
as  utterly  meaningless  and  ridiculous  as  many  of  the  doctrines 
preached  by  our  missionaries  must  appear  to  them.  / 

"White  men  who  have  dwelt  all  their  lives  with  the  Indians  * 
have  to  confess  that  they  know  very  little  about  their  inner  lives, 
and  understand  nothing  of  the  hidden  springs  of  action  arid  of 
the  secret  motives  that  impel  them  to  conduct  themselves  in  the 
strange  and  inexplicable  manner  they  sometimes  do.  ... 

"  We  regard  them  as  cowards,  lacking  bravery ;  they  regard  the 
bull-dog  courage  of  the  whites  as  fool-hardiness.  A  life  is  very 
valuable  to  them ;  hence  it  is  that  they  admire  the  man  who  can 
creep,  and  watch,  and  lie  out  for  days  and  nights  in  bitter  cold 
and  snow,  without  food  or  warmth,  and  who,  by  infinite  patience, 
cool  courage,  and  a  nice  calculation  of  chances,  secures  a  scalp  or  a 
lot  of  horses  without  risk  to  himself ;  but  who,  if  he  found  circum- 
stances unfavorable  and  the  odds  against  him,  would  return  without 
striking  a  blow.  That  is  the  man  they  look  up  to. 

"  In  our  great  cities  they  see  just  enough  to  degrade  the  inhabi- 
tants in  their  eyes.  They  can  learn  nothing  of  the  blessings  and 
advantages  attendant  on  civilization.  They  see  the  worst  only.  .  .  . 
He  is  free,  and  he  knows  it ;  we  are  slaves,  bound  by  chains  of  our 
own  forging,  —  and  he  sees  that  it  is  so.  Could  he  but  fathom  the 
depths  of  a  great  city,  and  gauge  the  pettiness,  the  paltry  selfishness 
of  the  inhabitants,  and  see  the  deceit,  the  humbug,  the  lying,  the 
outward  swagger  and  the  inward  cringing,  the  toadyism  and  the 
simulated  independence  ;  could  he  but  view  the  lives  that  might 
have  been  honorably  passed,  spent  instead  in  struggling  for  and 

39 


610  THE  INDIANS  UNDER  CIVILIZATION^ 

clutching  after  gold,  and  see  the  steps  by  which  many  a  respected 
man  has  climbed  to  fortune,  wet  with  the  tears  of  ruined  men  and 
women ;  could  he  appreciate  the  meanness  of  those  who  consider  no 
sacrifice  of  self-respect  too  great  provided  it  helps  them  to  the  end 
and  object  of  their  lives,  and  pushes  them  a  little  higher,  as  they 
are  pleased  to  call  it,  in  society ;  could  he  but  glance  at  the  mil- 
lions of  existences  spent  in  almost  chronic  wretchedness,  lives  that 
it  makes  one  shudder  to  think  of,  years  spent  in  close  alleys  and 
back  slums,  up  dismal,  rotting  courts,  —  without  sun,  ray,  air, 
grass,  flower,  of  beautiful  Nature,  —  with  surroundings  sordid, 
dismal,  debasing ;  if  he  could  note  how  we  have  blackened  and 
disfigured  the  face  of  Nature,  and  how  we  have  polluted  our  streams 
and  fountains  so  that  we  drink  sewage  instead  of  water;  could  he 
but  see  that  our  rivers  are  turned  to  drains  and  flow  reeking  with 
filth,  and  how  our  manufactures  have  so  impregnated  the  air  we 
breathe  that  grass  will  not  grow  exposed  to  the  unhealthy  atmos- 
phere, —  could  he  but  take  all  this  in  and  be  told  that  such  is  the 
outcome  of  our  civilization,  he  would  strike  his  open  palm  upon 
his  naked  chest  and  thank  God  that  he  was  a  savage,  uneducated 
and  untutored,  but  with  air  to  breathe  and  water  to  drink ;  igno- 
rant, but  independent ;  a  wild  but  a  free  man  "  1 

Another  sympathizer  with  the  Indian  mode  of  life  ex- 
presses himself  thus :  - 

"  I  saw  so  much  harmless  fun  and  amusement  among  these  Indi- 
ans [a  fishing  party],  and  they  evidently  find  so  much  enjoyment 
in  hunting  and  fishing,  that  I  could  only  wish  they  might  never 
see  much  of  the  white  man,  and  never  learn  the  baneful  habits  and 
customs  he  is  sure  to  introduce."  2 

A  scientific  English  gentleman  who  had  passed  a  year  of 
wild  life  near  the  Rocky  Mountains  thus  describes  his  dis- 
inclination to  return  to  civilized  restraints.  Reaching  St. 
Louis,  he  says :  — 

"  I  that  night,  for  the  first  time  for  nearly  ten  months,  slept 
upon  a  bed,  much  to  the  astonishment  of  my  linibs  and  body, 

1  The  Great  Divide  :  Travels  in  the  Upper  Yellowstone  in  the  Summer  of 
1874,  pp.  104-111.     London,  1876. 

2  Whymper's  "Alaska  :  Indians  on  Hukon  River,"  p.  232. 


INDIANIZED   WHITES.  611 

which,  long  accustomed  to  no  softer  mattress  than  mother  earth, 
tossed  about  all  night,  unable  to  appreciate  the  unusual  luxury.  I 
found  chairs  a  positive  nuisance,  and  in  my  own  room  caught  my- 
self in  the  act,  more  than  once,  of  squatting  cross-legged  on  the 
floor.  The  greatest  treat  to  me  was  bread ;  I  thought  it  the  best 
part  of  the  profuse  dinners  of  the  Planter's  House,  and  consumed 
prodigious  quantities  of  the  staff  of  life,  to  the  astonishment  of  the 
waiters.  Forks,  too,  I  thought  were  most  useless  superfluities,  and 
more  than  once  I  found  myself  on  the  point  of  grabbing  a  tempting 
leg  of  mutton  mountain  fashion,  and  butchering  oif  a  hunter's 
mouthful.  But  what  words  can  describe  the  agony  of  squeezing 
my  feet  into  boots,  after  nearly  a  year  of  moccasons,  or  discarding 
my  turban  for  a  great  boardy  hat,  which  seemed  to  crush  my  tem- 
ples !  The  miseries  of  getting  into  a  horrible  coat  —  of  braces, 
waistcoat,  gloves,  and  all  such  implements  of  torture  — "  etc. 1 

To  the  same  effect  —  as  showing  the  reversionary  ten- 
dencies and  proclivities  of  many  whites  for  barbarism,  and 
as  encouraging  the  Indian  in  casting  the  balance  against 
civilization  —  is  to  be  noted  a  fact  which  has  had  a  very 
painful  significance  in  many  saddened  affections.  As  soon 
after  the  settlement  of  this  country  as  the  savages  learned 
in  their  constant  border  raids  on  the  whites  that  they  could 
get  a  ransom  price  in  money  or  goods  for  captives,  they,  in 
many  cases,  spared  from  torture  and  death  young  persons, 
and  women  first,  and  then  men,  whom  they  carried  back 
with  them  to  their  haunts.  From  time  to  time  arrange- 
ments were  made  with  them  for  the  exchange  of  prisoners 
and  the  redemption  of  captives.  Then  in  very  many  cases  it 
was  found  to  the  dismay  of  parents  and  friends  that  even 
young  girls,  as  well  as  males,  who  had  lived  with  the  In- 
dians for  quite  a  short  time,  —  a  year  or  two,  —  were  so 
fascinated  with  their  new  ways  as  to  be  utterly  averse  to 
return  to  their  homes  and  kindred  in  civilized  scenes. 
There  was  something  in  the  wild  life  and  its  companion- 

1  Adventures  in  Mexico  and  the  Rocky  Mountains  (p.  303).  By  George  F. 
Ruxton,  Esq.,  Member  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  the  Ethnological 
Society,  etc. 


612  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

ships,  the  deep  forests,  the  alternate  excitement  and  tran- 
quillity of  the  lodges,  which  wrought  a  spell  over  young 
persons.  In  the  settlements,  sparsely  spread  or  formed 
into  villages  at  that  period,  household  life  had  much  drudg- 
ery, very  little  abandon  or  amusement,  a  rigid  domestic  and 
religious  discipline,  under  which  the  buoyancy  of  youth 
often  fretted,  longing  for  change  or  relief.  Farm  labor  and 
home  tasks,  from  early  day  till  night,  restraint  upon  youth- 
ful gayety,  and  cheerless  views  of  the  years  to  come  showed 
strong  contrasts  to  those  of  restless  and  adventurous  spirits 
with  the  Indian's  free  range.  Our  records  and  literature, 
beginning  with  the  first  negotiations  with  the  savages  for 
the  return  of  prisoners  for  a  ransom  down  to  quite  recent 
years,  are  filled  with  illustrative  instances  of  this  fact. 
Some  of  the  cases  are  very  touching  ones.  Golden  tells 
us  how  difficult  it  often  was  to  persuade  white  prisoners 
in  the  hands  of  the  French  and  Indians  to  accept  a  prof- 
fered restoration  to  their  friends.  Some  of  them,  on  hear- 
ing they  were  to  be  carried  back  to  the  settlements,  would 
run  off  and  hide  in  the  woods  till  the  peril  was  over.  Here 
is  a  scene  described  by  Golden,  when  some  prisoners  were 
brought  in:  — 

"  No  argument,  no  entreaties,  no  tears  of  their  friends  and  rela- 
tives could  persuade  many  of  them  to  leave  their  new  Indian  friends 
and  acquaintances.  Several  of  them  that  were,  by  the  caressings  of 
their  relatives,  persuaded  to  come  home,  in  a  little  time  grew  tired 
of  our  manner  of  living,  and  ran  away  again  to  the  Indians  and 
ended  their  days  with  them.  On  the  other  hand,  Indian  children 
have  been  carefully  educated  among  the  English,  clothed  and  taught, 
yet  not  one,  when  come  to  age  and  at  liberty,  but  what  returned  to 
their  race  and  mode  of  life  again  "  (p.  203). 

Take  as  an  instance  a  story  of  profound  interest  here 
nearly  two  hundred  years  ago.  The  town  of  Deerfield,  Mass., 
was  set  upon  and  burned  by  the  French  and  Indians  in  the 
depth  of  winter,  February,  1T04.  Of  the  inhabitants,  forty- 
seven  were  killed  and  about  one  hundred  taken  prisoners, 


WHITE   CAPTIVES   ADOPTED.  613 

to  pursue  the  long  tramp  of  three  hundred  miles  to  Canada. 
Among  them  was  the  minister,  Mr.  Williams,  and  his  fam- 
ily. His  exhausted  wife  fell  a  victim  to  the  hatchet  on  the 
second  day  of  the  dreary  journey.  He  himself,  and  fifty- 
six  other  captives,  were  redeemed  in  1706  and  brought 
to  Boston.  Many  remained  by  preference  in  Canada  with 
the  Indians.  Among  these  was  his  daughter,  Eunice  Wil- 
liams. No  persuasions  or  entreaties  of  her  father  could 
induce  her  to  return.  She  was  converted  by  a  priest, 
married  a  savage,  and  passed  a  long  and  contented  life  as 
the  mistress  of  a  wigwam.  After  the  peace,  she,  with 
her  red  husband,  visited  her  friends  and  father  in  Deer- 
field,  in  full  Indian  dress,  was  kindly  received,  but  would 
not  stay. 

Another  wildly  romantic  narrative  is  that  of  Mary  Jemi- 
son,  known  among  the  Indians  as  the  "White  Woman." 
Her  father,  mother,  two  brothers,  a  sister,  and  other  rela- 
tives were  all  murdered  by  the  Indians  in  1755,  on  their 
frontier  farm  in  Pennsylvania,  and  she  alone,  at  the  age  of 
thirteen,  was  allowed  to  live  as  a  captive.  Within  two  years 
she  had  an  opportunity  to  join  the  whites.  But  her  Indian 
mother  and  sister,  by  adoption,  treated  her  kindly,  arid  she 
preferred  to  stay  with  them.  Through  the  remainder  of 
her  life,  protracted  to  ninety-one  years, — living  on  the  Gen- 
esee  river,  and  naturalized  that  she  might  hold  land-prop- 
erty, and  thrown  into  frequent  contact  with  the  whites, — 
she  preferred  to  live  like  and  to  be  an  Indian,  surviving  two 
savage  husbands  (kind  to  her,  but  fiends  in  ferocity)  and 
five  children,  leaving  three  more  at  her  death. 

Thus  not  only  the  natives  of  the  forest,  but  equally  so  — 
and  under  circumstances  which  have  presented  a  very  strik- 
ing lesson  to  observers — white  persons  of  various  ages  and 
of  both  sexes  not  only  reconcile  themselves  of  necessity  to 
barbarous  life,  but  by  preference  yearn  with  strong  proclivi- 
ties to  enjoy  it,  feeling  it  a  cross  to  natural  inclinations  to 
accept  or  to  return  to  civilization.  We  may  not  marvel 


614  THE   INDIANS  UNDER  CIVILIZATION. 

at  this  manifestation  in  mature  Indians.  But  it  seems  to 
run  in  the  blood  of  their  little  children.  Two  inferences 
seem  naturally  to  follow  from  the  fact :  first,  that  any  hope- 
ful work  in  the  civilization  of  the  Indians  must  satisfy  itself 
with  effecting  its  results  with  the  third  generation  from  the 
present  full-grown  stock ;  and,  second,  that  we  must  be  con- 
tent with  accepting  fragments,  degrees,  and  stages  of  full 
civilization,  as  all  that  we  are  likely  ever  to  realize  in  those 
of  Indian  blood. 

A  good  illustrative  case  of  Indian  diplomacy  in  meeting 
that  of  civilization  is  found  in  the  full  reports  given  to  us 
of  a  Council  held  on  several  successive  days  in  July,  1742, 
at  Philadelphia,  for  the  cession  of  territory,  between  the 
representative  chiefs  of  the  Six  Nations  and  the  officers  of 
Penn's  Proprietary  Government,  —  George  Thomas,  being 
lieutenant-governor. 

Six  years  previous,  the  chiefs  in  council  had  agreed  to 
release  their  claim  to  a  certain  extent  of  territory  on  both 
sides  of  the  Susquehanna  River,  within  the  province,  for  a 
stipulated  amount  of  Indian  goods.  The  contract  was 
then  completed  as  regards  the  lands  on  the  eastern  side  of 
the  river,  and  half  of  the  goods  were  paid  over,  as  the 
chiefs  declined  at  that  time  to  receive  the  other  portion  for 
the  lands  on  the  western  side.  The  goods  were  in  the 
store-house  of  the  proprietor  awaiting  them  on  another 
visit.  This  was  made  on  the  date  above  mentioned,  when 
the  rest  of  the  contract  was  to  be  ratified.  The  proceed- 
ings were  deliberate  and  protracted.  Pains  were  taken  to 
write  down  the  almost  unpronounceable  names  —  as  lavish 
in  vowels  as  Russian  and  Polish  names  are  in  consonants  — 
of  some  hundred  of  the  Indian  representatives.  The  list 
of  the  goods  was  read,  including  forty-five  guns,  powder, 
lead,  blankets,  hats,  coats,  hatchets,  knives,  various  small 
articles,  and  twenty-five  gallons  of  rum.  The  leading  In- 
dian speaker,  Canassateego,  chief  of  the  Onondagoes,  said 
of  the  goods  proffered :  — 


INDIAN  DIPLOMACY.  615 

"  It  is  true,  we  have  the  full  Quantity  according  to  Agreement; 
but  if  the  Proprietor  had  been  here  himself  we  think,  in  regard  of 
our  Numbers  and  Poverty,  he  would  have  made  an  Addition  to 
them.  If  the  Goods  were  only  to  be  divided  amongst  the  Indians 
present,  a  single  Person  would  have  but  a  small  Portion ;  but  if 
you  consider  what  Numbers  are  left  behind,  equally  entitled  with 
us  to  a  share,  there  will  be  extremely  little.  We  therefore  desire, 
if  you  have  the  Keys  of  the  Proprietor's  Chest,  you  will  open  it 
and  take  out  a  little  more  for  us. 

"  We  know  our  Lands  are  now  become  more  valuable.  The 
White  People  think  we  do  not  know  their  value  ;  but  we  are  sen- 
sible that  the  Land  is  everlasting,  and  the  few  Goods  we  receive 
for  it  are  soon  worn  out  and  gone.  For  the  future  we  will  sell  no 
Lands  but  when  Brother  Onas  [Penn]  is  in  the  Country,  and  we 
will  know  beforehand  the  Quantity  of  the  Goods  we  are  to  receive. 
Besides,  we  are  not  well  used  with  respect  to  the  Lands  still  un- 
sold by  us.  Your  People  daily  settle  on  these  Lands  and  spoil  our 
Hunting.  We  must  insist  on  your  removing  them.  ...  It  is  cus- 
tomary with  us  to  make  a  Present  of  Skins  whenever  we  renew  our 
Treaties.  We  are  ashamed  to  offer  our  Brethren  so  few,  but  your 
Horses  and  Cows  have  eat  the  Grass  our  Deer  used  to  feed  on,"  etc. 

The  Governor  said  in  reply  :  — 

"  In  answer  to  what  you  say  about  the  Proprietaries,  they  are  all 
absent,  and  have  taken  the  keys  of  their  chest  with  them ;  so  that 
we  cannot,  on  their  behalf,  enlarge  the  quantity  of  goods.  Were 
they  here,  they  might  perhaps  be  more  generous,  but  we  cannot 
be  liberal  for  them." 

He  promises,  however,  that  the  Government  will  con- 
sider the  matter  with  a  view  to  a  further  present.  But  he 
reminds  them  that  the  moiety  of  territory  now  ceded  is,  by 
their  own  estimate,  less  valuable  than  the  other  portion, 
though  the  proprietor  overlooked  this  in  awarding  the 
goods.  He  adds :  — 

"  It  is  very  true  that  lands  are  of  late  become  more  valuable ; 
but  what  raises  their  value  1  Is  it  not  entirely  owing  to  the  indus- 
try and  labor  used  by  the  white  people  in  their  cultivation  and  im- 
provement ?  Had  they  not  come  amongst  you,  these  lands  would 


616  THE   INDIANS    UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

have  been  of  no  use  to  you  any  further  than  to  maintain  you. 
And  is  there  not,  now  you  have  sold  so  much,  enough  left  for  all 
the  purposes  of  living  1  "What  you  say  of  the  goods  —  that  they  are 
soon  worn  out  —  is  applicable  to  everything  ;  but  you  know  very 
well  that  they  cost  a  great  deal  of  money,  and  the  value  of  land  is 
no  more  than  it  is  worth  in  money." 

When  the  Governor  said  that  magistrates  had  been  sent 
to  remove  the  trespassers  on  their  lands,  the  chief  inter- 
rupted him  with  the  stinging  censure,  which  has  not  lost 
its  point  or  truth  to  tnis  very  year  as  applied  to  similar 
officials  sent  by  our  Government  year  by  year  for  like  pur- 
poses :  "  These  persons  who  were  sent  did  not  do  their 
duty.  So  far  from  removing  the  people,  they  made  sur- 
veys for  themselves,  and  they  are  in  league  with  the  tres- 
passers. We  desire  more  effectual  methods  may  be  used 
and  honester  persons  employed." 

Quite  a  valuable  present  in  goods  —  more  than  half  in 
quantity  to  those  of  the  stipulated  payment  —  was  given  to 
the  Indians.  It  was  very  evident  that  'their  orators  man- 
aged their  side  of  the  case  ably,  and  that  they  had  their 
fair  half  of  the  argument.  The  Indians  readily  admitted 
that  cultivation  added  to  the  value  of  lands  for  such  uses 
as  the  white  men  had  for  them.  But  they  were  by  no 
means  disposed  to  allow  that  the  only  value  of  lands  was 
that  given  to  them  by  cultivation.  Such  cultivation  spoiled 
lands  for  the  Indians'  uses.  They  preferred  the  growths 
which  Nature  raised  upon  them,  —  the  wild  fruits,  the  deer 
and  game,  and  the  uncleared  forest^  and  the  undammed 
stream.  The  contrast  was  fully  in  their  view ;  they  pre- 
ferred Nature  —  their  old  mother,  nurse,  and  companion  — 
to  Art. 

Gachradadow,  a  chief  of  the  Six  Nations,  in  a  Council  at 
Lancaster,  Pa.,  June,  1744,  thus  addressed  the  Governor 
of  Virginia :  — 

"  Brother  Assaragoa  !  The  World  at  the  first  was  made  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Great  Water  different  from  what  it  is  on  this  side, 


PLEAS   AGAINST   CIVILIZATION.  617 

as  may  be  known  from  the  different  colors  of  our  Skin  and  of  our 
Flesh  j  arid  that  which  you  call  Justice  may  not  be  so  amongst  us  : 
you  have  your  Laws  and  Customs,  and  so  have  we.  The  Great 
King  might  send  you  over  to  conquer  the  Indians,  but  it  looks  to 
us  that  God  did  not  approve  of  it ;  if  he  had.  he  would  not  have 
placed  the  Sea  where  it  is,  as  the  Limits  between  us  and  you.  .  .  . 
You  know  very  well  when  the  White  People  came  first  here  they 
were  poor ;  but  now  they  have  got  our  Lands,  arid  are  by  them 
become  rich,  and  we  are  now  poor ;  what  little  we  have  had  for  the 
Land  goes  soon  away,  but  the  Land  lasts  forever." *  <^ 

The  Governor  having  told  the  Indians  that  the  English 
had  recently  beat  the  French  in  a  war  on  sea  and  land,  the 
chief  said :  "  You  tell  us  you  beat  the  French ;  if  so,  you 
must  have  taken  a  great  deal  of  Rum  from  them,  and  can 
the  better  spare  us  some  of  that  Liquor,  to  make  us  rejoice 
with  you  in  the  victory."  The  Governor  and  Commission- 
ers ordered  a  dram  of  rum  to  be  given  to  each  in  a  small 
glass,  calling  it  a  French  glass.21 

The  great  object  of  this  Council,  after  settling  cessions 
of  territory  in  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  and  Virginia,  was  to 
pledge  the  Six  Nations  to  alliance  with  the  English,  or  at 
least  to  neutrality,  in  apprehended  further  hostilities  from 
the  French.  Canassateego,  on  the  next  day,  desired  a  dram 
out  of  an  English  glass.  Governor  Thomas  answered : 
"  We  are  glad  to  hear  you  have  such  a  dislike  for  what  is 
French.  They  cheat  you  in  your  glasses  as  well  as  in 
everything  else."  Reminding  the  Indians  that  they  had 
almost  drunk  out  a  good  quantity  of  spirit  brought  so  far 
from  their  "  Rurn  Stores,"  lie  said  that  there  was  still 
enough  left  for  English  glasses;  and  so,  with  bumpers, 
closed  the  Council. 

A  deputation  of  the  Osages  at  Washington,  being  pressed 
to  adopt  civilized  ways,  a  chief  said :  — 

"  I  see  and  admire  your  manner  of  living,  your  good,  warm 
houses,  your  large  fields  of  corn,  your  gardens,  your  cattle,  your 

1  These  extracts  are  from  Colden's  "  History  of  the  Six  Nations,"  p.  125. 

2  Ibid.  p.  142. 


618  THE  INDIANS  UNDER  CIVILIZATION. 

wagons,  and  a  thousand  machines  that  I  know  not  the  use  of.  I 
see  that  you  are  able  to  clothe  yourselves  even  from  weeds  and 
grass  :  in  short,  you  can  do  almost  what  you  choose.  You  whites 
have  the  power  of  subduing  almost  every  animal  to  your  use.  But 
you  are  surrounded  by  slaves  :  everything  about  you  is  in  chains, 
and  you  are  slaves  yourselves.  I  fear  if  I  should  exchange  my 
pursuits  for  yours  I  too  should  become  a  slave.  Talk  to  my  sons  : 
perhaps  they  may  be  persuaded  to  adopt  your  fashions,  or  at  least 
recommend  them  to  their  sons ;  but  for  myself  I  was  born  free,  was 
reared  free,  and  wish  to  die  free."  ] 

The  chief  of  the  Pawnees,  in  a  council  at  Washington  in 
1822,  said :  — 

"  My  Great  Father  [the  President]  I  The  Great  Spirit  made  us 
all ;  he  made  my  skin  red  and  yours  white ;  he  placed  us  on  this 
earth,  and  intended  we  should  live  differently  from  each  other. 
He  made  the  whites  to  cultivate  the  earth  and  feed  on  domestic 
animals ;  but  he  made  us  to  rove  through  the  uncultivated  woods 
and  plains,  to  feed  on  wild  animals,  and  to  dress  with  their  skins. 
He  also  intended  that  we  should  go  to  war,  to  take  scalps,  to  plun- 
der horses  from  and  triumph  over  our  enemies,  to  cultivate  peace  at 
home,  and  promote  the  happiness  of  each  other." 

He  frankly  added  that  he  did  not  wish  "  good  people," 
i.  e.  missionaries,  sent  among  them  to  change  their  habits 
and  make  them  live  and  work  like  white  people.  They 
preferred  much  their  own  wild  freedom  and  customs,  and 
having  lived  so  long  without  what  the  white  man  called 
"work,"  preferred  to  continue  so,  till  at  least  the  game 
became  extinct,  and  life  became  so  precarious  that  they 
might  be  compelled  to  admit  the  "  good  people  "  among 
them.  In  the  mean  time  they  would  hunt  the  buffalo,  the 
beaver,  deer,  and  other  wild  animals,  and  gladly  barter  for 
them  with  the  whites ;  but  they  did  not  wish  to  "  follow  the 
white  man's  road."  These  strong  pleadings  for  a  life  con- 
formed to  the  free  air  and  scenes  and  habits  of  Nature  by 
no  means  fail  of  responsive  yearnings  not  only  from  those 

1  Morse's  Report,  Appendix. 


CIVILIZATION  REPUDIATED.  619 

who  are  crushed  by  poverty,  toil,  and  struggle  in  civilized 
life :  they  touch  what  is  left  of  the  springs  of  simplicity 
and  sincerity  in  many,  pampered  and  jaded,  in  the  highest 
ranges  of  artificial  society.  So  it  is  not  strange  that  to 
the  one  question,  "  Can  an  Indian  be  civilized  ? "  some  per- 
sons add  another,  "  Why  should  he  be  civilized  ?  " 

When  the  astute  and  heroic  Indian  patriot  Tecumseh 
was  plying  all  his  energies  and  eloquence  to  engage  the 
Northern  and  Southern  tribes  in  a  vast  confederacy,  and  in 
alliance  with  the  British,  in  our  last  war  with  them,  for  the 
suppression  and  extinction  of  the  power  of  our  Government 
in  the  Mississippi  Yalley,  he  brought  to  bear  upon  his  wild 
and  maddened  followers,  as  well  as  upon  some  tribes  who 
were  halting  in  purpose,  a  direct  attack  upon  civilization.  He 
knew  well  the  forces  and  attractions,  as  well  as  the  enfee- 
bling and  demoralizing  influences,  of  the  white  man's  mode 
of  life.  In  his  own  mind  he  had  balanced  well  the  life  of 
civilization  and  of  barbarism,  and  his  savage  instincts  de- 
cided him  to  retain  for  his  people  the  state  of  Nature.  With 
a  power  of  appeal  —  pointed  with  sarcasm,  scorn,  and  invec- 
tive —  which  proved  him  able  to  stir  the  wildest  passions  of 
his  hearers,  he  bid  them  despise  the  plough  and  loom  and  all 
the  implements  of  thrift  and  toil,  and  cling  to  their  primi- 
tive customs.  He  warned  them  against  the  destruction  of 
their  magnificent  forests  and  the  pollution  of  their  crystal 
rivers.  Reminding  them  of  the  darker-colored  race  from 
Africa,  in  slavery  to  the  whites  on  their  violated  domains, 
he  foretold  that  fate  as  their  own  if  they  came  under 
subjection  to  the  white  man.  He  exhorted  them  to  rid 
themselves  of  every  symbol  and  token  of  their  previous 
intercourse  and  traffic  with  the  peddling  and  tricky  adven- 
turers from  the  States,  to  abandon  their  new  clothing  and 
even  their  guns,  to  dress  themselves  in  the  skins  of  the 
beasts  which  the  Great  Spirit  had  provided  for  their  food 
and  covering,  and  to  resume  the  war-club,  the  scalping- 
knife,  and  the  bow.  The  late  chief  Ouray,  whose  name 


620  THE  INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION, 

was  so  familiar  in  our  most  recent  complications  with  the 
Indians,  was  a  man  of  fine  endowments ;  and  though  he 
adopted  the  comforts  and  many  of  the  luxuries  of  the 
whites,  he  retained  by  preference  much  of  his  savagery. 
His  eminent  medical  practitioners  found  him  afflicted  with 
"Bright's  disease,"  with  his  end  not  distant.  He  pre- 
ferred, however,  to  meet  that  end  under  the  hands  of  his 
Indian  "  medicine-men,"  and  to  have  his  horses  killed  for 
burial  with  him. 

We  have  also  to  recall  the  fact,  which  has  presented  it- 
self to  us  in  another  connection,  that  the  noblest  specimens 
of  the  Indian  race  —  who,  as  endowed  with  mental  vigor, 
even  with  genius,  chieftains,  orators,  patriots,  and  diploma- 
tists, pleading  with  and  for  their  people,  have  argued  their 
cause  with  the  whites  for  more  than  two  centuries  —  have 
been  the  most  resolute  in  opposition  to  civilization.  If  we 
look  to  them  as  the  exponents  of  their  own  preference  for 
nature,  freedom,  and  the  woods,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  infer 
that  they  speak  from  a  profound  instinct,  a  proud  con- 
sciousness of  a  sort  of  manhood  in  them  contemptuous  of 
the  drudgery,  emulation,  conventionalisms,  and  subservi- 
ences of  artificial  life.  They  have  had  reason  to  know  that 
hollowness  and  falsehood  underlie  the  white  man's  life  and 
qualify  his  dignity  and  his  happiness.  Intercourse  such  as 
there  has  been  between  the  two  races  has  alienated  the 
Indian  from  the  white  man,  as  it  has  also  increased  the 
early  dislike  of  the  whites  for  the  Indians. 

For  to  all  the  occasions  of  antipathy  and  hostility  between 
the  Indians  and  the  whites — coming  from  the  embitterment 
engendered  by  the  wrongs  of  the  stronger  against  the 
weaker,  and  the  memory  of  savage  strifes  with  their  hor- 
rors and  atrocities  —  is  to  be  added  another,  already  recog- 
nized in  these  pages.  The  contempt  and  disgust  with 
which  the  English  colonists  very  soon  began  to  regard  the 
natives  have  strengthened  rather  than  yielded,  and  have 
manifested  themselves  in  their  intensest  indulgence  as  the 


FORLORN   REMNANTS   OP   TRfBES.  621 

Indians  have  been  humiliated  and  crushed.  A  savage  re- 
duced to  the  will,  and  to  dependence  on  the  support  or 
charity,  of  a  white  man  is  indeed  a  forlorn  and  repulsive 
spectacle.  There  is  about  him  none  of  the  sad  repression  of 
spirit  of  the  caged  lion,  but  rather  the  mean  aspect  and 
submission  of  the  whipped  cur.  A  savage  loses  all  that 
made  and  manifested  his  manhood  when  he  parts  with  his 
own  way  of  life,  with  his  fellows  and  surroundings,  and 
becomes  a  dependent  iipon  civilization  ;  for  in  his  mature 
years  he  will  never  be  a  helper  or  a  sharer  in  civilization. 
Remnants  of  the  Indian  tribes  lingered  long  in  our  old 
colonies  and  towns.  There  were  thirteen  hundred  of  them 
left  in  Connecticut  at  the  opening  of  our  Revolution. 
There  are  a  thousand  of  them  now  in  Maine.  Here  and 
there  in  our  country  towns,  as  has  been  stated,  are  patches 
of  land  still  pledged  to  them,  and  there  are  trust  funds 
secured  for  their  benefit.  They  generally  present  types  of 
reversion,  not  merely  to  savagery,  but  to  stages  behind  or 
below  it.  It  has  been  said  that  the  utmost  result  reached 
in  the  attempts  to  civilize  an  Indian,  has  been  the  turning 
of  a  wild  animal  into  a  tame  brute.  The  Indian  regards 
civilization  as  a  form  of  duress  and  imprisonment,  in  in- 
doors or  local  confinement,  in  decencies,  in  clothing,  dwel- 
lings, intercourse,  and  toil.  There  are  vastly  more  white 
men  who  agree  with  him  in  this  than  of  his  own  race  who 
disagree  with  him.  If  the  Tartar  is  underneath  the  skin 
of  a  Russian,  so  in  many  of  us  is  the  craving  for  the  wild 
license  of  Nature. 

After  King  Philip's  War,  such  of  the  remnants  of  the 
tribes  as  were  too  spiritless  to  seek  affiliation  with  the  River 
and  New  York  Indians  were  kept  under  jealous  watch,  es- 
pecially by  the  frontier  settlements.  Their  condition  was 
poor  and  mean,  and  their  character  answered  to  it,  as  shown 
in  their  craven  and  sullen  demeanor.  They  never  could 
commend  themselves  as  friends  or  as  desirable  acquaintan- 
ces of  our  farmers  and  thrifty  householders.  "  Vermin " 


622  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

was  still  the  repulsive  term  under  which  they  were  classed. 
Many  of  them  kept  in  family  groups  in  the  skirts  of  the 
woods,  and  as  they  appeared  occasionally  in  the  settlements 
were  employed  as  help  in  the  fields  or  in  lumbering.  They 
were  forbidden  to  enter  the  white  man's  dwelling  without 
formal  permission.  Occasionally  in  letters  and  family  dia- 
ries, written  up  to  a  hundred  or  more  years  ago,  we  read  of 
a  native  man,  woman,  or  youth  being  employed  as  a  house- 
servant.  The  pitiable  waifs,  the  objects  of  a  feeble  relent- 
ing and  a  strong  anxiety,  all  under  guardianship,  living  on 
the  remnants  of  the  family  table,  sleeping  in  out-buildings, 
mixed  with  negro  blood,  were  miserable  relics  of  the  native 
race.  There  was  something  pathetic  as  well  as  remorse- 
less in  the  frank  word  of  the  whites  to  these  wretched 
loiterers:  "  It  is  not  well  for  either  of  us  that  you  should 
stay.  Go  off." 

Many  significant  tokens  manifest  themselves  among  the 
printed  and  still  manuscript  papers  of  the  old  times  among 
us  of  the  shrinking  antipathy  even  of  Christian-minded  peo- 
ple against  coming  into  very  close  contact,  in  hospitality 
or  intercourse,  with  the  better  sort  of  Indians.  As  I  am 
writing,  I  recall  a  few  sentences  in  the  journal  of  Chief- 
Justice  Sewall,  a  merciful  friend  both  of  Indians  and  ne- 
groes. He  writes  under  date  of  Jan.  30, 1708,  that  John 
Neesnummin,  an  Indian  convert  and  approved  preacher, 
called  on  him  with  letters  from  Rev.  Roland  Cotton,  on 
his  way  to  Natick  to  preach,  and  needing  hospitality  for 
the  night.  "  I  shew  him,"  writes  Sewall,  "  to  Dr.  Mather." 
But  no  invitation  came  from  that  quarter.  Then,  "  I  be- 
spoke a  lodging  for  him  at  Matthias  Smith's  [probably  an 
innkeeper]  ;  but  after,  they  sent  me  word  they  could  not 
do  it.  So  I  was  fain  to  lodge  him  in  my  study." 

Horace  Greeley,  sensitive  as  he  was  to  every  right  and 
claim  of  humanity,  in  a  letter  during  his  travels  in  the  far 
West,  wrote  thus  in  the  "  New  York  Tribune,"  June, 
1859:  — 


SEMI-CIVILIZATION.  623 

"The  Indians  are  children.  Their  arts,  wars,  treaties,  alliances, 
habitations,  crafts,  properties,  commerce,  comforts,  all  belong  to  the 
very  lowest  and  rudest  ages  of  human  existence.  Some  few  of  the 
chiefs  have  a  narrow  and  short-sighted  shrewdness,  and  very  rarely 
in  their  history  a  really  great  man,  like  Pontiac  or  Tecurnseh,  has 
arisen  among  them ;  but  this  does  not  shake  the  general  truth  that 
they  are  utterly  incompetent  to  cope  in  any  way  with  the  European 
or  Caucasian  race.  Any  band  of  school-boys  from  ten  to  fifteen 
years  of  age  are  quite  as  capable  of  ruling  their  appetites,  devising 
and  upholding  a  public  policy,  constituting  and  conducting  a  State 
or  community,  as  an  average  Indian  tribe. 

"  I  have  learned  to  appreciate  better  than  hitherto,  and  to  make 
more  allowance  for  the  dislike,  aversion,  and  contempt  wherewith 
Indians  are  usually  regarded  by  their  white  neighbors,  and  have  been 
since  the  days  of  the  Puritans.  It  needs  but  little  familiarity  with 
the  actual,  palpable  aborigines  to  convince  any  one  that  the  poetic 
Indian,  the  Indian  of  Cooper  and  Longfellow,  is  only  visible  to  the 
poet's  eye.  To  the  prosaic  observer,  the  average  Indian  of  the 
woods  and  prairies  is  a  being  who  does  little  credit  to  human  na- 
ture, —  a  slave  of  appetite  and  sloth,  never  emancipated  from  the 
tyranny  of  one  animal  passion  save  by  the  more  ravenous  demands 
of  another.  As  I  passed  over  those  magnificent  bottoms  of  the 
Kansas,  which  form  the  Reservations  of  the  Delawares,  Pottawatto- 
mies,  etc.,  constituting  the  very  best  corn-lands  on  earth,  and  saw 
their  owners  sitting  round  the  doors  of  their  lodges  in  the  height  of 
the  planting  season,  and  in  as  good,  bright,  planting  weather  as  sun 
and  soil  ever  made,  I  could  not  help  saying,  '  These  people  must 
die  out  —  there  is  no  help  for  them.  God  has  given  this  earth  to 
those  who  will  subdue  and  cultivate  it,  and  it  is  vain  to  struggle 
against  His  righteous  decree.'  "  BfafaCFOft  Library 

Mr.  Greeley  would  have  reconciled  himself  to  the  ex- 
tinction of  the  Indian  race  by  the  working  of  natural  and 
irresistible  forces,  incident  to  their  own  condition  and  qual- 
ities, stimulated  in  their  processes  of  decline  and  decay, 
without  any  further  agency  of  the  white  man  to  effect  its 
extermination  other  than  his  proximity  as  destructive  to 
the  Indians. 

What  then  is  to  be  said  as  to  the  conditions  and  pros- 


624  THE  INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

pects  of  the  alternative  lot  of  the  Indians,  of  rescue,  help, 
and  survival  in  their  race,  by  civilization  ? 

Experience  and  facts  have  in  all  cases  proved  that  when 
a  body  of  Indians  have  been  brought  under  the  influence  of 
civilized  life  and  habits,  the  first  results  are  for  some  years 
discouraging.  There  is  always  observable  among  them  an 
increased  mortality  and  disease.  The  change  from  a  wild 
life  in  the  open  air  to  domestic  restrictions,  the  change  in 
food  and  its  cooking  from  wild  meats,  roots,  berries,  and 
fish  to  pork  and  heavy  bread,  the  heat  of  stoves,  etc.,  tend 
to  develop  in  them  cutaneous  diseases,  scrofula,  consump- 
tion, and  corrupt  blood.  The  most  forlorn  and  repulsive 
aspect  in  which  an  Indian  is  ever  presented  to  us  is  when 
he  is  in  the  state  that  may  be  called  semi-civilization,  —  with 
a  show  and  pretence,  often  a  mockery  of  the  white  man's 
ways,  in  shiftlessness,  wastefulness,  and  squalor,  both  in 
aspect  and  reality.  The  Indian  roaming  in  free  vigor, — with 
fresh  air  and  soil  and  simple  food,  with  the  odor  about  him 
of  the  forest-pine  and  the  berry,  lifting  the  brook-water  to 
his  lips, — is  in  some  sort  a  pleasing,  never  repulsive,  object. 
But  in  the  filthy  hovel  planted  in  the  mud,  with  refuse  in 
and  around  it,  with  greasy  utensils,  rags,  and  all  disgusting 
accompaniments,  the  sight  is  revolting.  There  are  sights 
one  can  see,  truthful  pages  one  may  read,  of  scenes  of  what 
we  call  a  degree  of  civilization,  as  among  the  Cherokees, — 
the  most  advanced  of  all,  with  their  laws,  their  legislature, 
their  papers,  churches,  schools,  etc.  As  for  domestic  ways, 
a  New  England  housewife  would  go  distracted  in  any  one  of 
those  homes.  The  mixture  of  breeds  —  white,  red,  and 
black  —  in  more  shadings  than  German  worsted  admits  of, 
and  the  mingling  of  squalor  with  intimations  and  materials 
of  thrift,  are  in  no  sense  attractive.  The  native  preacher 
or  teacher  —  it  may  be  educated  in  one  of  our  minor  col- 
leges, and  carrying  home  with  him  books — will,  either  of 
necessity  or  yielding,  fall  back  from  more  than  one  stage  of 
his  advance. 


DOMESTIC  ANIMALS  AS   CIVILIZERS.  625 

All  these,  however,  are  marks  of  transition  from  a  sav- 
age to  a  civilized  state.  If  there  is  a  persistency,  a  re- 
inforcing of  effort,  with  wise  helpfulness  and  guidance  from 
the  white  man,  the  experiment  slowly  advances.  The 
increase  of  mortality  is  arrested  after  some  ten  or  a  dozen 
years. 

One  of  the  instigating  and  most  helpful  agencies  in  the 
transition  from  savagery  to  civilization  is  found  in  the  own- 
ership, oversight,  and  breeding  of  domestic  animals.  They 
create  an  interest  and  responsibility  which  are  humanizing ; 
they  demand  and  foster  forethought  and  discretion ;  they 
prompt  to  the  making  of  fences,  barns,  and  sheds ;  they  re- 
quire stay-at-home  habits,  and  the  provision  for  winter  food. 
Indeed,  one  might  construct  a  scale  of  degrees  to  mark  pro- 
gress towards  civilization  through  these  tokens  of  a  transi- 
tion from  barbarism.  The  Indian  pony, — accommodating 
himself  in  his  reversion  from  the  Spanish  stock  to  the  habits 
of  his  new  owners,  shaggy,  ungroomed,  unshod,  and  tangled 
in  tail  and  mane  and  hide  with  brambles  and  briars,  —  has 
greatly  advanced  the  Indian.  He  is  property.  He  sets  a 
standard  for  values.  As  the  wild  buffalo  disappears  from 
the  plains,  the  less  wild  domestic  cattle,  with  their  herders, 
come  in  by  thousands.  The  semi-civilized  tribes  win  that 
epithet  not  so  much  because  of  their  own  personal  habits  as 
because  of  the  roosters  that  crow  around  their  barn-yards, 
the  cattle,  sheep,  and  hogs  which  indicate  farms,  sheds,  and 
pens.  The  Pueblo  Indians  claim  to  have  perpetuated  their 
stage  of  civilization  by  the  same  tokens.  The  Navahoes 
go  a  stage  beyond,  with  their  vast  herds  for  breeding,  and 
their  goats  and  donkeys.  The  Apaches  would  have  a  lower 
place  on  this  scale ;  because,  though  they  have  horses  and 
mules,  instead  of  increasing  them  from  their  stock,  they 
cook  all  their  own  animals  in  the  winter,  and  steal  a  new 
supply  in  the  spring.  The  chief  Ouray  was  regarded  as  the 
richest  Indian  in  the  country,  having,  beside  his  annual 
pension  of  a  thousand  dollars  from  the  Government,  large 

40 


626  THE  INDIANS  UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

numbers   of   domestic   animals,  his  well-furnished   house, 
and  his  well-filled  larder  and  wine-cellar. 

Some  of  the  conditions  which  have  been  found  most  fa- 
vorable, if  not  also  indispensable,  to  the  slow  work  of  civil- 
izing a  body  of  Indians,  are  the  following  :  — 

1.  They  must  be  planted  by  themselves,  at  least  twenty 
miles  remote  from  any  white  community, 

2.  They  must  have  a  large,  scattering  place,  —  not  a  vil- 
lage, —  with  broad,  separate  lots,  fertile,  close  to  wood  and 
water.     Thus  they  must  be  kept  away  from  the  pernicious 
influences  and  the  humiliating  presence  of  the  whites,  and 
be  prevented  from  huddling  together,  as  in  their  old  camp 
life. 

3.  All  intermarriage  and  like  intercourse  between  the 
whites  and  the  Indians  must  be  forbidden.     The  Indians 
never  rise,  and  the  whites  are  always  debased  by  it. 

4.  Each  Indian  settlement  should  be  a  centre  for  a  single 
tribe,  not  on  a  frontier,  between  two  nations. 

5.  The  place  to  be  wholly  free  of  wild  animals,  with  a 
slight  allowance  for  game,  but  always  near  good  fishing. 

6.  Farmers  with  implements,  to  reside — two,  not  more  — 
in  each  settlement ;  and  missionaries,  to  defer  their  efforts 
till  they  are  asked  for  and  welcomed,  as  teachers  of  moral- 
ity and  the  virtues,  without  sectarian  doctrines. 

7.  Government   to   exercise   a  firm,   though    kind   and 
friendly,  oversight  over  all  their  interests. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  the  vast  numbers  of  half-breeds 
among  the  Indians  would  have  some  of  the  white  man's 
capacity  for  taking  care  of  themselves.  They  will,  if  we 
leave  them  to  their  own  way  of  doing  it.  But  in  some 
cases  they  are  far  more  troublesome  than  real  Indians. 
The  traits  and  characteristics  of  the  red  man  prevail  in 
them  over  those  of  the  whites.  This  is  true  even  when  one 
parent  is  English  or  Scotch,  but  more  especially  so  when 
one  parent  is  French.  The  half-breeds  intensify  Indian 
qualities.  In  the  woods  and  lodges  they  do  not  show  any 


PATIENT  AND   PERSISTENT  EFFORTS.  627 

sense  of  being  a  degraded  caste,  but  they  feel  it  when  in 
the  settlements.  This  mixture  of  the  races,  with  the  blend- 
ing of  some  of  the  least  noble  and  some  of  the  most  per- 
verse traits  of  each,  is  found  to  introduce  among  the  Indian 
tribes  of  the  more  remote  places,  and  who  have  shared  the 
least  in  amicable  relations  with  the  whites,  influences  un- 
favorable to  civilization.  But,  on  the  whole,  it  is  probably 
safe  to  judge  that  this  mixture  of  the  races  presents  condi- 
tions which,  as  favorable  or  unfavorable  to  our  future  pa- 
cificatory relations  with  such  tribes,  balance  each  other. 
Very  slow  and  very  gradual,  with  many  baitings,  arrests, 
and  drawbacks,  must  be  the  stages  of  release  from  the  ways 
of  barbarism,  and  the  advance  of  the  Indians  to  the  acquired 
habits  of  self-dependence  on  their  own  abounding  resources. 
It  is  a  mediatorial  work  between  the  white  man  and  the  red 
man.  Patience,  friendliness,  help  in  all  its  ingenuities  of 
method  and  service,  with  a  firm  and  overawing  power  in 
reserve,  must  not  only  be  the  agencies'  to  promote,  but  also 
the  authority  and  the  force  to  insist  upon,  the  extinction  of 
savagery  and  the  steady  progress  of  civilization.  For  rea- 
sonable periods  there  will  be  no  objection  to  bringing  the 
Indians  into  such  a  condition  as  will  render  it  indispen- 
sable for  them  to  need  the  white  man's  resources  and  help. 
But  a  view  should  always  be  had  to  a  critical  time  when 
the  Indians,  realizing  how  essential  these  appliances  are  to 
them,  sliall  be  made  to  understand  that  if  these  resources 
are  within  their  own  reach  by  the  simple  use  of  forethought 
and  industry,  they  must  henceforth  draw  them  from  the 
earth  and  not  from  the  national  treasury.  It  will  require 
no  effort  and  no  justification  from  us  to  steel  our  hearts 
against  the  importunities  of  those  who  are  wilfully  thrift- 
less and  lazy. 

My  principal  aim  in  this  volume  has  been  to  trace  out 
and  illustrate  a  statement  made  in  an  early  page  of  it,  that 
the  relations  between  European  invaders  and  colonists  with 
the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  this  continent  have,  from  the 


628  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION, 

first  to  the  present  time,  run  in  a  series  of  two  parallel 
lines,  —  the  one  of  professed,  intended,  earnest,  and  costly 
efforts  for  the  benefit  of  the  natives ;  the  other,  of  outrages, 
aggressions,  wrongs,  and  miseries  inflicted  upon  them.  I 
have  frankly  admitted  the  melancholy  and  humiliating  fact 
that  violent,  oppressive,  and  inhuman  measures  and  deeds 
have  to  a  very  large  extent  thwarted  and  nullified  these 
kindlier  purposes,  so  that  they  have  been  triumphed  over. 
But,  so  far  as  absolute  truth  will  allow,  I  have  sought  to  re- 
lieve the  reproach  upon  us  of  the  wantonness  of  intent  and 
purpose  in  wrong-doing,  by  referring  some  of  the  wrong 
to  the  infelicity  and  malignity  of  circumstances. 

It  is  grateful,  therefore,  in  closing,  to  recognize  as  the 
last  device  of  ingenuity  in  the  intention  of  justice  and 
friendliness  to  the  Indian  tribes,  another  experiment  re- 
cently put  on  trial,  with  the  prompting  of  private  benev- 
olence and  the  efficient  aid  of  the  Government.  The 
schools  established  at  Hampton  and  Carlisle  for  the  edu- 
cation in  the  rudiments  of  knowledge  and  of  the  industrial 
arts  of  Indian  youth  of  both  sexes  have  already,  in  the 
practical  excellence  of  their  plan  and  methods,  and  in  the 
gratifying  success  of  their  work,  engaged  the  hearty  sym- 
pathy of  a  widely  extended  constituency.  The  leading  aim 
in  those  institutions  is  to  arrest  the  processes  by  which  the 
pupils,  withdrawn  from  all  the  habits  and  surroundings  of 
their  own  people  and  subjected  to  those  of  the  'whites, 
might  be  in  danger  of  becoming  unfitted  or  indisposed  to 
go  back  to  their  homes,  and  to  give  them  only  such  a  term 
of  residence,  and  only  such  helps  in  education  and  training, 
as  will  best  qualify  them  to  stir  and  assist  others  of  their 
race  in  an  advance  to  civilization.  This  method  had,  pre- 
vious to  the  institution  of  these  two  schools,  won  the  ap- 
proval of  the  wisest  and  most  successful  class  of  teachers 
resident  among  the  Indians.  Scarce  any  success  attended 
their  labors  while  the  Indian  children  were  merely  day- 
pupils  in  their  schools  and  returned  to  their  own  lodges  at 


A  RAY  OF  HOPE.  629 

night.  Boarding  schools  alone,  in  which  the  pupils  were 
taught  decorum,  propriety,  and  above  all  cleanliness,  were 
found  essential.  And  religion  also  effects  its  best  work 
through  indirect  teaching  in  character  and  influence,  rather 
than  through  doctrines  and  professional  offices. 

The  Indians  seem  now  to  have  become  aliens  in  the  land 
of  their  nativity.  There  is  one  ray  of  possible  hopefulness 
for  them,  and  with  such  cheer  as  it  may  afford  we  may 
close  the  review  of  their  sad -history.  What  reason  or  as- 
surance there  may  be  for  the  hope  now  to  be  intimated  will 
depend  for  each  one  on  his  estimate  of  the  quality,  the  ca- 
pacity, the  destiny  of  the  Indian  race.  At  any  rate  those 
who,  as  philanthropists,  grieve  most  over  the  wrongs,  plead 
most  earnestly  for  the  rights  of  the  Indians,  and  insist  that 
there  is  a  brighter  future  before  them,  ought  to  emphasize 
this  hope..  It  is  that  the  race  may  soon  present  to  us  one 
or  more  specimens  of  truly  great  and  wise  men,  patriots, 
civilians,  of  lofty  minds,  pure  aims,  with  the  faculty  of 
quickening,  guiding,  and  inspiring  their  fellows,  lifting 
them  and  leading  them  onward.  It  will  be  well,  too,  if 
such  a  man  or  such  men  may  be  of  pure  Indian  blood,  of 
unmixed  native  stock,  with  the  virility  and  the  nobleness  of 
a  wilderness  birth,  and  that  he  accept  without  shame,  ay, 
glory  in,  the  tinge  of  his  race.  That  the  wilderness,  with 
the  help  and  without  the  bane  of  civilization,  should  pro- 
duce one,  two,  three  great  leaders  of  men,  peers  of  many 
members  of  our  Congress,  and  of  more  than  one  of  our 
Presidents,  would  be  an  easy  accomplishment.  May  it  not 
produce  such  men  equal  to  our  foremost  and  best  ?  Why 
not  ?  We  have  had  a  few  of  the  Indian  race  whom,  by  our 
standards,  we  call  able,  gifted,  great.  They  have  indeed 
been  few.  We  may  count  them  for  the  centuries  on  one 
hand,  —  five.  But  all  of  these  foremost  Indian  chief- 
tains —  Philip,  Pontiac,  Tecumseh,  Osceola,  Black  Hawk  — 
have  represented  savagery,  have  stood  and  fought  for  sav- 
agery. They  have  all  been  familiar  with  what  civilization 


630  THE   INDIANS   UNDER   CIVILIZATION. 

is  and  does ;  but  they  have  loathed  it,  despised  it,  rejected 
it,  and  given  their  whole  power  and  sway  to  forbid  and 
crush  it.  Now  may  not  this  native  greatness,  this  leader- 
ship of  men,  manifest  itself  in  a  few  gifted  with  genius, 
nobly  endowed,  patriots  in  spirit,  yet  born  or  self-trained 
to  a  conviction  that  civilization  is  for  man  a  state  prefer- 
able to  that  of  savagery  ?  The  elevation,  if  not  the  security 
from  extinction,  of  the  race  of  red  men  depends  upon  its 
furnishing  masters  and  guides  from  its  stock.  A  race 
that  cannot  itself  contribute  its  redeemers  will  never  be 
redeemed. 


INDEX. 


A. 

ABORIGINES,  the,  of  America,  name 
of,  —  why  they  were  called  "  In- 
dians," 1-3  ;  the  French  name  for, 
3;  seen  in  Europe  for  the  first 
time,  4;  first  known  to  Europeans 
through  Columbus,  4;  general 
conjectures  concerning,  stated,  6  ; 
their  claim  on  our  sympathies,  16- 
18  ;  their  reception  of  the  first  com- 
ers from  Europe,  a  kindly  and  gen- 
tle welcome,  18,  218, 219, 330 ;  how 
that  kindness  was  turned  to  rage 
by  the  conduct  of  the  white  man, 
18,  218,  219,  222,  330;  intentions 
towards  and  instructions  regard- 
ing, expressed  in  the  patents  and 
charters  granted  to  the  first  colo- 
nists, 22-25;  King  Francis's  des- 
cription of, — "  Men  without  knowl- 
edge of  God  or  use  of  reason,"  — 
27  ;  attempts  to  Christianize,  4 ; 
endowments  for  their  secular  and 
religious  welfare,  4  ;  their  standing 
in  the  courts,  4 ;  the  space-pres- 
sure upon,  32-35 ;  the  destiny  of, 
as  forecast  by  many,  37,  38 ;  first 
natives  sent  to  Europe  as  slaves,  45, 
46 ;  supposed  to  be  Devil-worship- 
pers, 61 ;  employed  as  slaves  by 
the  Spaniards  in  the  New  World, 
62,  63;  evidence  of  their  offer- 
ing human  sacrifices,  64,  75 ;  their 
hatred  and  dread  of  the  Spaniards 
73 ;  missionary  efforts  in  behalf 
of,  80-84,  369,'  371,  386,  389,  390- 
419,  422,  423-459,  472  ;  interesting 
question  of  their  origin,  85,  et  seq. ; 
sedentary  and  roving  tribes  of,  86 ; 
communal  life  of,  87,  88 ;  uncer- 


tainty attaching  to  tribal  names  of, 
88,  89;  relative  place  of,  in  the 
scale  of  humanity,  89,  90,  120; 
Protestant-Puritan  theory  of  the 
Hebrew  origin  of,  92 ;  their  own 
opinion  of  themselves,  92  ;  strong 
general  similarity  among  them, 
92 ;  probably  indigenous,  not  ex- 
otic, 92  ;  original  numbers  of,  94- 
97,  —  various  and  extravagant 
opinions  concerning,  94,  95,  —  the 
practical  interest  of  this  question, 
95,  96 ;  mode  of  life  and  resources 
of,  compared  with  the  common 
people  of  Ireland  and  Scotland, 
97  ;  capacities  of,  physical,  mental, 
and  moral,  98,  99 ;  different  esti- 
mates of  the  character  of,  99-113; 
romantic  views  of,  110-112  ;  a  peo- 
ple with  a  history  but  without  a 
historian,  112,  140,  141 ;  state  and 
royalty  of,  113-116  ;  languages  of, 
116,  117,  179-183;  natural  elo- 
quence of,  117 ;  vocabularies  of, 
and  European  labors  upon,  117- 
120 ;  natural  ferocity  of,  120-127, 
192-198;  parallelisms  of  their 
scalping  practice  found  in  bar- 
barous European  tribes,  121, — 
and  in  the  practices  of  the  colo- 
nists themselves,  122,  123;  their 
own  courage  and  heroism,  and  ad- 
miration of  these  qualities  in  oth- 
ers, 124 ;  cannibalism  of,  125 ; 
medical  practice  of,  127-133; 
health  and  disease  among,  13Q, 
131, 133  ;  their  manner  of  disposing 
of  their  dead,  133,  134 ;  religious 
beliefs  and  practices  of,  134-139; 
how  they  received  the  doctrines 
of  the  missionaries,  137-139,  382 ; 


632 


INDEX. 


children  of  Nature,  and  conformed 
to  their  natural  surroundings,  142- 
146;  indifference  of,  to  uncleanli- 
ness  and  dirt,  145,  146 ;  their  food 
and  cookery,  147,  148,  178  ;  their 
costumes  and  dwellings,  149,  150, 
163,  164,  172;  importance  of  the 
"  medicine-hag  "  to,  150, 151 ;  their 
cunning  and  skill  in  sylvan  and 
martial  experiences,  152,  154,  155, 
157  ;  their  capacity  to  enjoy  sim- 
ple sensations,  155,  156 ;  self-reli- 
ance of,  156  ;  their  respect  for  tra- 
dition, 156 ;  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural  alike  to,  156 ;  noma- 
dic habits  of,  157, 158  ;  their  names 
for  themselves  and  children  and 
places  the  suggestions  of  Nat- 
ure, 158-161 ;  observing  and  re- 
flecting powers  of,  159 ;  their 
own  supposed  relationship  to  ani- 
mals, 159,  160 ;  totems,  or  badge- 
marks  of,  161,  162 ;  value  of  the 
canoe  to,  165,  —  skill  required  in 
the  use  of,  166,  167,  — materials 
and  construction  of,  167-169 ;  su- 
periority of  their  moccason  as  a 
foot-gear,  169,  170;  their  snow- 
shoe,  —  form,  materials,  and  use  of, 
170-172 ;  practice  of  polygamy 
among,  172 ;  winter  experiences  of, 
173;  their  habits  of  thrift  and 
providence^  remarks  upon,  173- 
177 ;  their  cultivation  of  corn,  175, 
176 ;  interpreters  among  them, 
181 ;  their  sign-language,  182, 183 ; 
not  wanting  in  the  human  craving 
for  fun  and  amusement,  184;  nat- 
ural tendency  to  obscenity  and 
sensuality  finds  few  checks  among 
them,  185  ;  their  passion  for  gam- 
bling, 185, 186  ;  their  feasts,  games, 
sports,  etc.,  186-188 ;  their  love 
and  methods  of  hunting,  188, 189  ; 
their  superstitions,  190-192 ;  their 
fighting  propensities  and  qualities 
and  methods,  192-198;  a  state 
of  warfare  natural  to  them,  193 ; 
destructiveness  of  their  inter-tribal 
conflicts,  194;  their  treatment  of 
prisoners,  196,  197  ;  war-spirit  of, 
not  on  the  wane,  198 ;  their  first 
possession  and  use  of  fire-arms, 
198,  199;  their  form  of  govern- 


ment, 199-201 ;  their  money,  — 
"  belts,"  "  wampum,"  etc.,  201, 
202 ;  their  love  of  the  horse,  and 
their  property  in  ponies,  202-204 ; 
their  methods  of  training  and  in- 
structing their  youth,  205,  206; 
present  number  of,  207 ;  nature 
and  basis  of  their  original  territo- 
rial claim  on  this  continent,  213, 
214 ;  their  manner  of  meeting  the 
claims  of  the  colonists  to  lawful  su- 
premacy, 230,  319;  the  white  man's 
theory  that  they  were  as  vermin  to 
be  destroyed,  235-237  ;  their  rights 
never  clearly  defined,  242,  243 ; 
range  required  for  each  one,  244, 
245;  their  present  dependence  on 
the  Government,  246 ;  amount  of 
supplies  furnished  to  them,  247 ; 
their  rights  as  a  race,  249,  250; 
their  partiality  for  the  French, 
317,  319 ;  their  hard  fate  to  fight, 
suffer,  and  be  crushed  in  and  by 
the  conflicts  of  the  rival  colonies, 
346 ;  lineal  connection  between 
present  and  former  tribes,  354 ; 
present  feeling  of  whites  toward, 
as  compared  with  former,  355, 
356 ;  the  tricks  some  of  them 
put  upon  Catholic  missionaries, 
388 ;  their  sorcerers  and  the  Jes- 
uits, 398 ;  they  are  natural  tran- 
scendentalists,  399 ;  condition  of 
those  on  the  Columbia  River,  473 ; 
an  instance  of  the  sullen  feeling 
witli  which  some  of  their  chiefs 
ceded  lands  to  the  whites,  546, 
615-617  ;  formalities  attending 
their  councils,  549,  550 ;  the  two 
theories  as  to  the  final  disposition 
of, — extermination  and  civiliza- 
tion, —  568,  587,  588  ;  opinions  of 
military  men  upon  the  fate  of, 
569  ;  what  humanity  demands  for 
them,  571  ;  the  threefold  aspect 
of  their  relation  to  our  Govern- 
ment, 573;  they  must  be  made 
self-supporting,  575-578,  584,  585 ; 
proportion  of,  which  are  of  mixed 
blood,  580  ;  necessity  of  disarm- 
ing them,  583 ;  they  must  give 
up  their  communistic  and  tribal 
relations,  585,  586 ;  as  subjects  of 
civilization,  588  ;  the  opinion  that 


INDEX. 


633 


they  cannot  be  civilized,  594-596  ; 
their  objections  to  civilization,  603, 
617-620 ;  not  improved  by  civili- 
zation, 604,  621,  624  ;  patience  and 
friendliness  the  great  requisites  in 
dealing  with  them,  627  ;  grounds 
of  hope  for  them,  629 ;  tiiey  must 
contribute  their  own  redeemers, 
630. 

Acadia,  "  French  Neutrals  "  in,  307; 
a  bone  of  contention  between  Eng- 
lish and  French,  308 ;  character  of 
its  inhabitants,  311,  312,  —  their 
exile  and  dispersion,  313-318. 

Adams,  J.  Q.,  his  statement  of  the 
theory  of  the  Government  as  to 
the  Indians,  532  ;  extract  from  his 
Diary,  532,  533. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  his  geological  theory 
of  the  American  Continent,  4,  93. 

Agnostic,  an  Indian,  383,  384. 

Alexander  VI.,  Pope,  his  donation  of 
the  whole  continent  of  the  New 
World,  under  the  title  of  the  "  In- 
dies," to  the  Spanish  Crown,  51,  52. 

Altar  Furniture,  the  Jesuit,  409,  410. 

America,  continent  of,  doubtful  evi- 
dence of  its  discovery  by  Europe- 
ans before  Columbus,  2,  4 ;  archae- 
ology of,  4,  5,  et  seq. ;  suppositions 
concerning,  relating  to  its  discov- 
ery by  Europeans,  7, 8 ;  first  sought 
as  a  highway  to  India,  then  as  a 
goal  in  itself,  9,  10 ;  extravagant 
descriptions  of,  by  first  visitors 
here,  10,  11,  12 ;  the  value  of  the 
discovery  of,  to  humanity  in  the 
Old  World,  12-16 ;  grandeur  and 
stretch  of  its  territory,  14,  15; 
what  the  three  leading  nationali- 
ties of  Europe  —  Spanish,  French, 
and  English  —  sought  here,  15, 16  ; 
its  magnificent  water  highways, 
153,  154 ;  sparseness  of  its  original 
population,  214,  215;  the  great 
drama  of  which  it  is  the  stage, 
involving  the  fate  of  its  aborigi- 
nes, 264. 

Animals,  Indian  relations  with,  159, 
160. 

Arnold,  S.  G.,  his  estimate  of  the  In- 
dian contrasted  with  Dr.  Palfrey's, 
114,  115. 


B. 

BAPTISM,  significance  of,  to  the 
Spanish  invaders  of  the  New 
World,  69;  its  adjustment  to  the 
doctrine  of  hell  as  a  symbol  of 
salvation,  73,  74;  suspicion  of, 
on  the  part  of  the  Indians,  381. 

Barbarism,  233. 

Belts,  Indian,  in  councils,  201,  202. 

Bible,  Eliot's  Indian,  455. 

Bloodhounds,  first  used  against  the 
natives  by  Columbus,  47  ;  after- 
wards by  other  Spanish  invaders, 
66. 

Brant,  Joseph,  Thayandanegea,  508. 

Brebeuf,  Father,  404. 

Bressani,  Jesuit  Father,  account  of 
his  labors  and  sufferings  as  a  mis- 
sionary among  the  Indians,  411- 
418. 

British  America,  479. 

British  relations  to  and  treatment  of 
the  Indians,  477,  481,  482,  505, 
506. 

Buffalo,  Indian  use  of,  177. 

Bureau,  Indian,  origin  of,  559 ;  trans- 
fer of,  from  the  War  to  the  Inte- 
rior Department,  reasons  for,  561, 
562. 

Burgoyne,  General,  he  employs  the 
Indians  against  us  in  the  Revolu- 
tionary War, — extract  from  his 
proclamation  to  the  Americans, 
499. 

C. 

CALIFORNIA,  Indians  in,  84. 

Calumet  (peace-pipe),  the,  193. 

Campion,  Major  J.  S.,  his  estimate  of 
the  Indian's  capacity  for  civiliza- 
tion, 101, 102 ;  his  characterization 
of  Indian  religious  ceremonies, 
136. 

Cannibalism,  125. 

Canoe,  Indian  the,  value,  uses,  ma- 
terials, and  construction  of,  165- 
169. 

Caonabo,  native  cacique  of  Hispani- 
ola,  and  first  in  the  line  of  Indian 
patriots  to  organize  the  natives 
against  their  white  invaders,  47. 

Caribs,  first  natives  sent  to  Spain  as 
slaves,  45,  46, 48. 


634 


INDEX. 


Carlisle,  Indian  School  at,  628. 
Cartier,  Jacques,  130,  174,  277,  278. 
Catlin,  George,  his  opinion   of  the 
endowment  and  character  of  the 
Indian,  99,  100. 

Champlain,  Samuel  de,  French  voy- 
ager and  colonizer,  277 ;  visits 
Mass.  Bay,  277,  —  and  Canada, 
279 ;  his  great  influence  over  the 
Indians,  280 ;  employs  tribe  against 
tribe,  281,  282. 

Charters  and  Patents  of  the  Ameri- 
can colonists,  instructions  of,  re- 
garding treatment  of  the  Indians, 
22-25. 

Chinese,  the,  question  of  their  ethni- 
cal relation  to  this  country  stated, 
8,9. 

Christendom,  its  view  of  heathen- 
dom, and  of  what  should  be  the 
relations  of  Christians  with  all 
other  men  and  women,  53,  54,  59, 
60,  63,  64,  69,  227,  228 ;  nature  of 
the  doctrines  its  missionaries  pre- 
sented to  the  savages,  137,  138, 
375,  377,  378 ;  quotes  Scriptural 
authority  for  its  dispossession  of 
the  Indians,  237. 
Christianity,  What  is  it  ?  371. 
Christians,  their  treatment  of  each 
other  outmatches  in  cruelty  their 
treatment  of  the  Indian,  19,  20; 
their  missionary  efforts,  some  gen- 
eral remarks  on,  368  et  seq. ;  their 
disputes  among  themselves  as  to 
the  nature  of  their  religion,  371- 
374  ;  their  discordant  teachings  to 
the  Indians,  373-375,  377. 
Civilization,  product  and  process  of, 
90;  difficulty  of  drawing  a  sharp 
line  between,  and  barbarism,  91 ; 
a  state  of  non-conformity  to  Na- 
ture and  natural  surroundings, 
143 ;  assumed  prerogatives  of,  as 
towards  barbarism,  231,  589,  590, 
—  the  subject  considered,  232  et 
seq.;  easy  lapse  from,  in  many 
cases  of  our  early  colonists,  363- 
365 ;  Salvation  and,  375 ;  some  ob- 
jections to,  589 ;  indispensable  con- 
ditions of,  591  ;  arbitrary  defini- 
tion of,  592,  593  ;  European  form 
of,  593  ;  not  all  gain  and  blessing, 
597  ;  what  the  savage  sees  in,  598, 


600-602;  different  degrees  of,  as 
presented  in  the  white  man's  prog- 
ress here,  601,  602 ;  indispensable 
conditions  of,  for  the  Indian,  626. 
Clay,  Henry,  his  forecast  of  the  i'ate 
of  the  red  men  on  this  continent, 
532,  533. 

Colonization  of  the  American  con- 
tinent, its  earliest  conditions  and 
opportunities,  216,  218, 219 ;  safety 
of  the  colonists  lay  in  the  inter- 
tribal warfare  of  the  natives,  and 
in  making  alliance  with  one  tribe 
against  another,  217, 221 ;  methods 
of  the  different  colonists,  218-220; 
plea  of  the  colonists  in  justification 
of  their  course  towards  the  natives, 
220,  221 ;  theory  of  discovery  un- 
der which  Europeans  took  posses- 
sion of  the  continent,  226,  227; 
claim  of  the  colonists  that  the  na- 
tives were  their  rightful  subjects, 
228-230  ;  the  white  man's  reasons 
for  dispossessing  the  Indians,  239, 
240;  feeble  beginnings  but  rapid 
advance  of,  251-253. 

Columbus,  his  theory  of  the  globe, 
its  size,  etc.,  2,  3 ;  his  desire  to  find 
a  short  passage  to  the  Indies  the 
great  motive  of  his  Western  voy- 
ages, 2,  3 ;  his  first  discovery  of 
San  Salvador,  40;  his  impression 
of  the  natives,  40,  41 ;  his  kindly 
treatment,  in  the  first  instance,  of 
the  savages,  41,  42;  first  blood 
shed  between  his  men  and  the 
natives  of  Hispaniola,  42 ;  builds 
a  fort  and  establishes  a  colony  at 
Hispaniola,  43  ;  his  second  voyage 
to  the  New  World,  43-45 ;  estab- 
lishes a  colony  at  Isabella,  45 ; 
sends  natives  to  Spain  to  be  sold 
as  slaves,  45 ;  incites  natives 
against  natives  in  his  conflicts 
with  them,  47 ;  his  description  of 
the  natives  of  Hispaniola,  49  ;  im- 
ports Spanisli  convicts  to  America, 
62  ;  sanctions  the  enslaving  of  the 
natives,  62,  63,  67  ;  his  final  discov- 
ery of  the  American  continent,  67. 

Communal  Indian  life,  87. 

"  Conquest,"  word  chosen  by  his- 
torians to  define  the  method  of 
the  Spaniards  in  obtaining  mastery 


INDEX. 


635 


in  the  New  World,  —  inaccuracy 
of  its  application,  49,  50 ;  lawful- 
ness of  a  war  of,  maintained  by 
Sepulveda,  55,  56;  religious  mo- 
tive of,  70-74. 

Continent,  the  new,  boon  of,  13. 

Cooking,  Indian,  147,  148,  178. 

Cornstock,  Indian  chief,  117. 

Cortes,  his  manner  of  "preaching 
the  gospel "  in  Mexico,  67 ;  his 
view  of  his  mission  there,  73 ;  his 
attempt  to  convert  Montezuma, 
381. 

Coureurs  de  Bois,  291. 

Custer,  General  G.  A.,  his  estimate  of 
the  Indian,  104-107 ;  his  remarks 
upon  the  variety  of  their  lan- 
guages, 180;  attains  proficiency 
in  Indian  sign-language,  183. 

D. 

DARTMOUTH  College,  its  origin  in 
a  provision  for  the  education  of 
the  Indian,  26. 

Deeds,  Indian,  rightfulness  and  le- 
gality of,  240,  241 ;  the  exact  force 
of,  242,  335. 

Deer  Island,  463. 

Defence,  the,  of  the  white  man  for 
his  treatment  of  the  Indian,  19. 

De  Gourgues,  Dominique,  retaliates 

•  upon  the  Spanish  in  Florida  for 
their  destruction  of  Huguenot  col- 
ony, 274,  276. 

De  Soto,  his  ravages  through  Florida, 
Georgia,  Alabama,  and  Mississippi, 
75-79. 

Dodge,  Richard  Irving,  his  romantic 
experience  with  "  a  child  of  Na- 
ture "  of  the  softer  sex,  108,  109. 

Domain,  our  National,  208. 

Domestic  animals  as  civilizers,  625. 

Dreams,  Indian  superstition  about, 
190,  191. 

Druillettes,  Jesuit  Father,  some  ac- 
count of  his  life  and  labors,  429, 
430;  his  diplomatic  mission  to 
New  England,  430  ;  visits  Boston, 
Plymouth,  and  Salem,  430,  431 ; 
his  interview  with  John  Eliot,  432. 

DuflTerin,  Earl  of,  his  opinion  of  the 
French  half-breeds,  301 ;  his  state- 
ment of  the  relations  of  the  Can- 


adian Government  to  the  Indians, 
478. 

Dug-outs,  Indian,  169. 

Dunraven,  Earl  of,  his  experience 
with,  and  views  of,  the  Indian, 
608-610. 

Dunster,  President,  423,  444. 

Dutch,  the,  in  New  York,  —  their  am- 
icable relations  with  the  Indians, 
and  first  to  sell  them  fire-arms, 
282,  343 ;  their  subsequent  wars 
with  the  red  men,  343,  344. 

E. 

EDUCATION  of  the  Indians,  early 
provision  for,  25,  26 ;  later  pro- 
vision for,  628. 

Eliot,  John,  Indian  missionary  and 
apostle  :  his  birth,  423 ;  studies  for 
the  ministry,  arrives  in  Boston, 
settles  in  Roxbury,  424 ;  meets 
opposition  at  first  in  his  mission- 
ary purposes  for  the  Indians,  424 ; 
begins  to  study  their  language, 
425 ;  after  two  years'  study  begins 
to  preach  to  the  natives,  426,  427  ; 
wins  sympathy  in  his  work,  427 ; 
chooses  Natick  as  the  scene  of  his 
great  experiment  for  colonizing, 
converting,  and  civilizing  the  In- 
dians, 428 ;  receives  a  visit  from 
the  Jesuit  Father  Druillettes,  429, 
432 ;  his  meekness  and  modesty, 
434;  method  of  his  labors,  434, 435 ; 
the  civil  magistrates  cautious  in 
assisting  him,  435 ;  opposed  by 
some  of  the  sachems,  436 ;  his 
Indian  settlement  at  Natick,  437, 
—  its  hopeful  beginnings,  438, — 
its  internal  arrangements,  438, 
439 ;  receives  aid  in  his  work 
from  the  English  Society  for  pro- 
pagating the  gospel,  441 ;  the 
mighty  faith  of  some  of  his  Indian 
disciples,  441,  —  some  of  their  ques- 
tions and  arguments,  442-444,  — 
their  impatience  for  advancement 
in  Church  fellowship  and  priv- 
ileges, 439,  445,  —  their  "confes- 
sions "  of  faith,  and  examination 
by  their  minister,  446-448 ;  his 
desire  to  translate  the  Scriptures 
into  the  Indian  tongue,  449,  450; 


636 


INDEX. 


his  Indian  grammar,  extract  from, 
451 ;  his  various  works  of  trans- 
lation, 454 ;  final  appearance  of 
his  complete  translation  of  the 
Bible,  455,  456 ;  his  zeal  for  his 
"Praying  Indians"  in  their  hard 
experience  during  King  Philip's 
War,  462,  463;  some  of  his  suc- 
cessors, 471. 

England,  its  illustration  of  the  dis- 
position of  the  strong  against  the 
weak,  69,  70 ;  her  common  cause 
with  the  Indians  against  us,  257 ; 
has  she  been  more  just  and  wise 
toward  them  than  has  our  own 
Government  ?  477 ;  how  she  gained 
dominion  on  this  continent,  478, 
479 ;  she  has  intrigued  to  set  the 
Indians  against  us,  480  ;  her  rela- 
tions with  the  Indians  different 
from  ours,  481,  482;  employs  In- 
dians against  us  in  both  of  our 
wars  with  her,  495,  496,  500,  601, 

504,  508 ;  her  heartless  manner  of 
abandoning  them   after  the  war, 

505,  506  ;  on  the  whole,  her  policy 
toward  the  Indians  hardly  a  mag- 
nanimous one,  509,  —  some  further 
illustrations  of  the  truth  of  this 
judgment,  510,  511 ;  her  system  of 
government    regulations    of    the 
Indians  similar  to  ours,  512  ;  her 
dangers  ahead    with  her    savage 
subjects,  513. 

English,  the,  third  settlers  in  the 
New  World,  but  outlasting  their 
predecessors,  the  Spanish  and 
French,  in  the  permanency  of 
their  occupation,  16;  their  esti- 
mate of  Indian  character  and 
capacity,  102,  103,  333,  620,  622 ; 
made  themselves  less  agreeable 
and  conformed  to  the  red  men 
than  the  French,  292-294,  319, 
320  ;  began  to  colonize  in  the  New 
World  under  no  royal  patronage, 
304;  founded  here  a  democracy, 
305;  effect  of  their  different  re- 
ligion from  that  of  the  French  in 
America,  306;  conflicts  with  the 
French,  307-310 ;  their  colonies  in 
America :  the  great  strain  and  cost 
upon  them  to  get  established,  326- 
328,  —  preamble  to  their  confeder- 


ation, 332,  —  their  purchases  of 
Indian  land,  335-338,  —their  vari- 
ous wars  with  the  Indians,  324, 
340,  341,  344,  345,  — their  union 
for  defence,  347,  — their  rivalry 
with  the  French  culminating  in 
the  French  and  Indian  War,  347 
et  seq.;  accession  of,  to  Western 
territory,  349  ;  their  forest  strong- 
holds and  garrisons,  and  their 
efforts  to  maintain  them,  350-353. 
"  Evangeline/'  Longfellow's,  307. 

F. 

FESTIVALS,  Indian,  187. 

Fire-water,  reason  of  the  name,  489. 

Franciscan  Friars,  the,  rivalry  of, 
with  the  Jesuits,  in  their  Canadian 
missions,  298-300;  their  mission- 
ary labors  in  Canada,  389,  390. 

French,  the,  first  visitors  to  America 
after  the  Spaniards,  3,  260 ;  their 
fishing  voyages  to  the  New  World, 

265,  266 ;  basis  of  their  claim  to 
the  possession  of  the    continent, 

266,  288-290;    in   some  respects 
more  agreeable  to  the  natives  than 
were  the  Spaniards,  266,  267  ;  their 
disastrous  attempts  at  colonization 
in  Florida,  270-273;  they  colonize 
in  Acadia  and  Canada,  276  et  seq. ; 
kidnap   Indians   in    Canada,   277, 
278  ;  settle  in  Alabama  and  Loui- 
siana,   283-286;    no    vestige    re- 
maining now,  except  in  names  of 
lakes    and  rivers,   etc.,    of   their 
former  h' old  on  the  continent,  286, 
287 ;  their  work  as  explorers,  289  ; 
their  influence  over  the  savages, 
290,  317;  their  voyageurs  and  cour- 
eurs,  291 ;    their  easy  conformity 
to  the  ways  and  customs   of  the 
red  men,   292,  293;    half-breeds, 
301 ;  motives,  agencies,  and  prin- 
ciples of,  compared  with  those  of 
the  English,  302,  303,  305;  their 
treatment  of   the    Iroquois,   303, 
304;    conflicts   with  the   English, 
307-310,  —  cession  of  territory  to, 
308,  310,  317,  348. 

Friars,  the  Dominican,  beginning  of 
their  work  in  the  New  World, 
71-73. 


INDEX. 


63T 


Frontenac,  Count,  his  connivance 
with  Indian  cruelty,  125,  126 ;  his 
conformity  to  Indian  customs,  295. 

Frontiers,  our,  shifting  character  of, 
358-362. 

Frontiersmen,  the,  qualities  and 
hardships  of,  360-367. 

Fur-trade,  the,  295,  296;  Hudson- 
Bay-Company  traffic  in,  488 ; 
French  Northwest  Company  in, 
491 ;  American  enterprise  in,  492. 

G. 

GAMBLING,  Indian  love  of,  185. 

Games,  Indian,  187. 

Gookin,  Daniel,  overseer  of  Indian 
settlements  in  Mass.,  440 ;  his 
hopeful  Report  to  the  Society  in 
England,  457  ;  his  hearty  co-opera- 
tion with  Eliot,  457,  458;  his 
"  Account  of  the  Doings  and  Suf- 
ferings of  the  Christian  Indians  " 
in  King  Philip's  war,  459,  —  his 
labors  in  their  behalf,  462,  464. 

Gospel,  message  of,  to  the  Indians, 
377. 

Greeley,  Horace,  his  observation  and 
opinion  of  the  Indian,  623. 

Guacanagari,  native  cacique  of  His- 
paniola,  his  friendly  services  to 
Columbus,  43,  47. 

H. 

HALF-BREEDS,  the  French,  301. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  his  advice  and 
action  concerning  the  Indians,  529. 

"Hammock"  (or  Hamac),  word  im- 
ported into  English  from  the  lan- 
guage of  the  natives  of  Hispaniola, 
49. 

Hampton,  Indian  School  at,  628. 

Harrison,  President,  his  argument 
with  Tecumseh,  529,  530. 

Harvard  College,  its  early  part  in 
the  education  of  the  Indian,  25,  26 ; 
Indian  students  at,  467. 

Hawkins,  Sir  John,  father  of  the 
English  Slave-trade,  271. 

Hearne,  Samuel,  382. 

Hontan,  Baron  la,  125-127,  162. 

Horse,  the,  terrific  spectacle  •  of,  to 
the  natives,  as  used  in  warfare,  47, 


66;  use  of,  secured  to  Cortes  the 
conquest  of  Mexico,  66;  present 
stock  of,  an  importation  to  this 
continent,  202 ;  the  use  and  value 
of,  learned  by  the  Indian  from  the 
white  man,  202  -  204 ;  a  means, 
with  other  domestic  animals,  of 
civilization  to  the  Indian,  625. 

Hudson  Bay  Company,  the,  its  ori- 
gin, 483  ;  a  gigantic  monopoly,  not 
seeking  colonization,  but  gain,  484, 
486 ;  literature  of,  485,  491 ;  num- 
ber of  its  employes,  485 ;  opinion 
of  it  of  its  own  servants  and 
agents,  487;  its  enormous  profits, 
488 ;  its  employment  of  half- 
breeds,  488 ;  furnishes  great  quan- 
tities of  "  fire-water  "  to  the  Indi- 
ans, 489,  490;  its  feuds  with 
French  hunters  and  traders,  491 ; 
its  relations  to  Selkirk's  Red  River 
Settlement,  493 ;  its  efforts  to  open 
direct  trade  with  China  across  our 
continent,  494,  495. 

Huguenots,  the,  in  America,  270; 
fortunes  of  their  colony  in  Florida, 
271-273. 

"Hurricane,"  word  imported  into 
English  from  the  language  of  the 
natives  of  Hispaniola,  49. 


INDIAN,  origin  of  the    name.     See 

Aborigines. 

Indian  College,  the,  name  of  the 
first  brick  building  at  Harvard,  25, 
26. 

Indian  doctors,  the,  129. 

Indian  names  of  places,  desirableness 

of  their  being  recalled,  160,  161. 
|  "Indian  Question,"  the,  difficulties 
of,  o5-38,  553 ;  helps  and  facilities 
reached  for  dealing  wisely  with  it, 
554-556  ;  the  present  actual  situa- 
tion of,  557,  558. 

Indies,  the,  a  western  passage  to, 
the  dream  of  Columbus,  2,  3, — 
and  of  Europeans  generally,  9,  10. 

Intelligence,  average  of,  among  men 
generally  rated  too  high,  91;  re- 
mark of  Dr.  Franklin  quoted,  91. 

Isabella,  of  Castile,  pleads  for  kind 
treatment  of  the  Indians,  22;  her 


638 


INDEX. 


instructions  to  Las  Casas  on  this 
point,  57,  58. 

Isabella,  site  of  the  second  colony 
established  in  the  New  World  by 
Columbus,  45 ;  its  experiences,  46. 

J. 

JENNISON,  MART,  an  Indianized 
white  woman,  613. 

Jesuits,  the,  exquisite  tact  of,  among 
the  savages,  in  conforming  to  their 
modes  and  manners,  146 ;  their 
method  of  converting  the  savages 
compared  with  that  of  the  Puritan 
and  Protestant,  297,  300,  369,  377  ; 
influence  of  their  priests  on  the 
Indians,  307,  309,  —  their  devotion 
and  zeal  as  missionaries  to  the  red 
men,  385,  386,  390  et  seq.,  —  their 
preparatory  training  and  discipline, 
391,  392,  402,  —  their  "  Relations," 
393?  —  their  method  of  life  and 
their  homes  in  the  wilderness,  394- 
396,  405-408,  —  their  success  as 
Indian  missionaries,  399,  —  the 
tragic  fate  which  some  of  them 
met,  403,  405,  —  their  altar  orna- 
ments in  the  wilderness,  409,  410, 
—  their  task  of  conversion  a 
lighter  one  than  the  Protestants', 
468. 

Jogues,  Father,  403. 

Johnson,  Sir  William,  Indian  Agent, 
191. 

Judgment,  the,  forewarned  against 
the  white  man  for  his  treatment  of 
the  Indian,  18,  19. 


L. 

LAFITAU,  Jesuit  Father,  his  book  on 
the  Indians,  112,  113;  his  experi- 
ence of  the  Indian  sign-language 
and  the  difficulty  of  speech  with 
the  natives,  118,  119 ;  his  idea  of 
their  courage  and  heroism,  124, 
137. 

Land,  Indian  tenure  of,  208. 

Language,  the  Indian,  intricate  sub- 
ject of,  and  wide  difference  of  au- 
thorities on,  116;  richness  and 
copiousness  of,  116;  labor  and 
zeal  bestowed  upon,  by  Europe- 


ans, 117-120;  natural  origin  and 
beauty  of  many  of  its  names  of 
persons  and  places,  158,  160,  161 ; 
inter-communication  by,  among 
different  tribes,  179 ;  variety  of  its 
dialects,  180;  found  by  the  whites 
to  be  difficult  of  mastery,  181,  182, 
—  yet  in  communication  be- 
tween natives  and  whites  the  lat- 
ter go  more  than  half-way,  182; 
remarkable  facility  of  the  sign- 
language  between  individuals  and 
tribes,  183;  Prof.  Powell's  syste- 
matic attempts  to  study  it,  183, 
184. 

La  Salle,  French  explorer,  167,  486. 

Las  Casas,  the  great  apostle  to  the 
Indies,  —  his  protest  against  the 
Christian  view  of  conquest,  54- 
57. 

Lodge,  the  Indian,  149. 

Lubbock,  Sir  John,  his  view  of  the 
origin  of  human  existence  on  the 
American  continent,  5. 

M. 

MATZE,  Indian  culture  of,  176. 

Marquette,  Father,  283,  289,  404. 

Massasoit,  Indian  chief,  115. 

Masse,  Father  Enemond,  388. 

Mather,  Cotton,  342. 

Mather,  Increase,  336. 

Medicine-bag,  the,  an  indispensable 
article  of  outfit  to  the  Indians, 
150,  151. 

Membertou,  a  converted  Indian 
chief,  his  great  age,  387  ;  his  char- 
acter, 387  ;  his  proposed  improve- 
ment of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  389. 

Menendez,  in  Florida,  272. 

Mexicans,  the  ancient,  state  of  their 
.civilization,  74;  Prescott's  state- 
ment in  regard  to,  75 ;  evidence  of 
their  cannibalism  and  human  sac- 
rifices, 75,  76;  their  supposed  in- 
tercourse with  Northern  aborigi- 
nes, 179. 

Miantonomo,  Indian  chief,  115,  116. 

Military  Officers,  their  views  of  Ind- 
ian character,  109-111. 

Missions,  Christian,  some  general 
remarks  on  aims  and  methods  of, 
368,  et  seq. 


INDEX. 


639 


Moccason,  Indian  the,  a  superior 
foot-gear  for  sylvan  and  frontier 
life,  169;  its  materials  and  con- 
struction, 169,  170. 

Moravian  Missions,  475. 

Morgan,  Lewis  H.,  a  valuable  writer 
on  aboriginal  life,  87. 

Mound  Builders,  the,  subjects  of 
much  ingenious  speculation,  92; 
Loskiel  quoted  upon,  92. 

NT. 

NATICK,  Indian  Town,  437. 

Nature,  Indian  accordance  with, 
145. 

Navidad,  site  of  the  first  colony  es- 
tablished in  the  New  World  by 
Columbus,  43 ;  its  tragic  fate,  44, 
45. 

New  Testament,  Eliot's  Indian,  455. 

Nicolet,  Sieur  the,  first  Frenchman 
to  reach  the  Mississippi  from  the 
north,  86. 

Nomads,  land-rights  of,  223,  224. 

Nouu,  Father,  403. 

Nunez,  Vasco,  first  European  dis- 
coverer of  the  Pacific,  and  the  first 
to  launch  European  keels  upon  its 
waters,  58,  59. 

O. 

OVANDO,  NICHOLAS  DE,  cruel  and 
treacherous  conduct  of,  toward 
the  natives  at  Hispaniola,  48. 

P. 

PALFREY,  JOHN  G.,  his  low  estimate 
of  the  Indian,  as  compared  with 
the  opposite  of  Governor  Arnold, 
114,  115. 

Pappooses,  Indian,  their  training, 
205. 

Parkman,  Francis,  great  value  of  his 
historical  writings,  259-263. 

Parliament,  the  English,  discussion 
in,  on  the  employment  of  the 
Indians  against  us  in  the  war  of 
the  Revolution,  500,  502. 

Pemmican,  an  invention  of  the  Indi- 
ans found  valuable  to  white  men, 
178. 


Penn,  William,  his  pacific  policy 
with  the  Indians,  abandoned  by 
his  successors,  218,  357  ;  his  inter- 
view with  Charles  II.,  227. 

Pequot  war,  the,  341,  342. 

Philip,  Indian  king,  his  scorn  of 
civilization  and  Christianity,  331 ; 
ground  of  his  complaint  against 
the  whites,  331,  332;  his  war  with 
the  N.  E.  colonists,  338,  —  the 
right  and  wrong  of  it,  339,  340,  — 
its  relation  to  the  "  Praying  Indi- 
ans "  in  Mass.,  460-465. 

Pilgrims,  the,  first  Europeans  who 
came  to  the  New  World  designing 
permanent  settlement,  10 ;  take 
root  in  Massachusetts  and  Con- 
necticut, 16 ;  receive  instructions 
from  the  Indians  in  the  cultivation 
of  corn,  and  in  the  use  of  alewives 
as  a  fertilizer,  175;  their  treaty 
alliances  with  different  tribes,  221. 

Pontiac,  leader  of  the  Indian  con- 
spiracy against  the  English  in  the 
West,  318;  ablest  and  bravest  of 
the  great  Indian  chieftains,  321  ; 
his  characteristics  and  plans, 
322-324;  his  death  by  treachery, 
325. 

Pony,  the  Indian,  203. 

"  Praying  Indians,"  the,  their  doings 
and  sufferings  in  King  Philip's 
War,  460-465  ;  what  finally  befell 
them,  465,  466. 

Protestant  missions,  the,  among  the 
Indians,  less  successful  than  the 
Roman  Catholic,  80;  aims  and 
methods  of  the  two  quite  differ- 
ent, 80-83,  369,  377  ;  delay  in  the 
beginning  of,  421 ;  action  of  the 
Mass.  General  Court  concerning, 
422,  423  ;  continuation  of  them  to 
the  present  time,  475,  476. 

Pueblo  Indians,  the,  139. 

Puritans,  the,  their  estimate  and 
treatment  of  the  Indian,  116,  420; 
their  method  of  conversion  differ- 
ent from  that  of  the  Jesuit,  297, 
300 ;  opinions  of  some  individual, 
concerning  the  Indians,  336,  342 ; 
their  reverence  for  the  whole 
Bible,  453  ;  severity  of  their  disci- 
pline with  the  Indians,  469,  470. 


640 


INDEX. 


Q. 

QUAKERS,    the,    action    of,    in  the 
French  and  Indian  War,  356-358. 
Questions  asked  by  Indians,  443. 

R. 

RALLE,  Jesuit  Father,  death  of,  309; 
his  account  of  his  missionary 
labors,  409,  410. 

Re'collet  Fathers,  Missionaries,  299, 

•    389.390. 

Relations,  the,  between  the  white 
man  and  the  Indian,  historically 
traced  in  two  parallel  lines,  20,  21 ; 
the  conflict  between  benefits  and 
wrongs  in  the,  21,  32  ;  what  they 
might  have  been,  28-30 ;  Lafitau's 
judgment  of,  32  ;  tendency  of  the 
development  of,  32,  33 ;  the  ques- 
tion of  permanent  domain  in, 
32-35 ;  first  example  in,  of  using 
natives  against  natives,  set  by 
Columbus,  47 ;  readiness  of  con- 
formity in,  of  the  ways  of  the 
former  to  those  of  the  latter,  151, 
152 ;  the  enormous  shedding  of 
blood  involved  in,  269. 

"  Repartimientos,"  system  of,  as 
employed  by  Columbus,  62. 

"Requisition,"  the,  form  of  royal 
instructions  under  which  the 
Spaniards  pursued  their  Conquest 
of  the  aborigines,  59-61. 

Reservations  for  Indians,  84 ;  num- 
ber of  acres  held  in,  244;  sugges- 
tions as  to  modifications  of,  578, 
579 ;  area  of  the  Indian  Territory, 
579, — number  of  its  inhabitants, 
580;  States  which  contain,  580; 
trespasses  on,  581 ;  necessity  for 
contracting,  582. 

Reversionary  tendency  to  Savag- 
ism,  605-608. 

Ribault,  Jean,  leader  of  the  Hugue- 
not colony  in  Florida,  270-273. 

Roman  Church,  the,  its  assumption 
as  regards  a  so-called  state  of 
heathenism,  53  et  seg.,  224,  225; 
its  claim  to  a  heritage  on  the  new 
continent,  as  set  forth  in  the 
"  Catholic  World,"  62  ;  success  of 
its  Missions  among  the  Indians 


greater  than  those  of  the  Protest- 
ants, 80,  385 ;  its  aims  and  methods 
in  Missions  different  from  those  of 
the  Protestants,  80-83,  —  descrip- 
tion of  them,  474,  475,  —  their 
greater  advantage,  379,  380;  char- 
acter and  labors  of  some  of  its 
missionaries,  385-388,  411-416. 

S. 

SAGARD,  Father,  299. 

Sampson  Occum,  an  Indian  ordained 
to  the  Christian  ministry,  —  his 
connection  with  the  founding  of 
Dartmouth  College,  26. 

Savagism,  the,  latent  in  humanity, 
127,  604 ;  how  easily  it  becomes 
patent  in  cases  of  Indianized  white 
men,  363-366 ;  the  Indian's  persis- 
tence in,  and  relish  for,  594-596, 
617-620 ;  reversionary  instincts  to, 
some  illustrations  of,  604-608, 
610-614. 

Scalps,  Indian,  bounties  on,  offered 
and  paid  by  the  colonial  govern- 
ments, 122,  123,  357. 

Scalping,  practice  of,  120,  121. 

Seals,  the,  adopted  by  the  early 
colonies,  —  their  quaint  devices 
and  legends,  30-32. 

Selkirk,  Earl  of,  his  Red  River 
Settlement,  and  its  fortunes,  495. 

Sepulveda,  Dr.  Juan,  the  leading 
opponent  of  Las  Casas  in  his 
merciful  view  of  a  war  of  Con- 
quest, 55-57. 

Snow-shoe,  Indian  the,  an  ingenious 
invention  of  the  aborigines,  —  its 
form,  materials,  and  use,  170-172. 

Spaniards,  the,  first  discoverers  of 
America  and  namers  of  its  abor- 
igines, 2,  3 ;  their  greed  for  gold 
the  spur  of  their  adventurous 
ambition,  10,  15,  68;  character- 
istics of,  as  discoverers  and  con- 
querors, 50,  51,  334 ;  their  assump- 
tion, under  papal  authority,  of 
exclusive  ownership  of  the  New 
World,  51,  52  ;  make  slaves  of  the 
Indians,  62,  63 ;  maintained  the 
right  and  the  duty  of  Conquest, 
64 ;  their  idea  of  a  heathen  and  of 
the  treatment  due  him,  65 ;  their 


INDEX. 


641 


atrocious  cruelty  towards  the  In- 
dians, 65,  60 ;  their  unconscious 
irreverence  in  coupling  acts  of 
torture  and  slaughter  with  sacred 
rites  and  names,  66,  67 ;  their 
other  motives  besides  rapacity 
and  fanaticism,  76 ;  Humboldt's 
judgment  of  them,  76 ;  first  of 
Europeans  to  come  into  contact 
with  the  natives  on  the  Pacific 
coast,  79,  80 ;  their  missions  in 
California,  80,  83,  84 ;  their  mur- 
derous destruction  of  the  Hugue- 
not colony  in  Florida,  272,  273. 

Squaw-man,  a,  580. 

Squaws,  Indian,  as  workers,  576. 

"  Suderie,"  the  (sweat-box,  or  vapor 
bath),  a  great  Indian  cure  for  fe- 
vers, etc.,  132,  133. 

Sullivan,  General,  his  chastisement 
of  the  "  Six  Nations  "  in  obedi- 
ence to  Washington's  instructions, 
505. 

Superstitions,  Indian,  191. 


T. 


TECUMSEH,  his  conspiracy  against 
the  U.  S.  Government,  529;  en- 
deavors to  form  a  confederacy  of 
the  Western  tribes,  530  ;  his  argu- 
ment with  General  Harrison,  530; 
his  opinion  of  civilization,  619. 

Torture,  Indian  practice  of,  123. 

Treaties  with  the  Indians,  our,  un- 
wise policy  and  mischievous  nature 
of,  536-543;  occasion  and  manner 
of  their  violation,  544,  545,  547, 
549. 

U. 

UNITED  STATES,  the,  area  and  acre- 
age of,  207  ;  present  Indian  popu- 
lation in,  207 ;  number  of  square 
miles  in,  settled,  and  number  of 
acres  of  public  land,  208  ;  number 
and  nature  of  its  government 
treaties  with  the  Indians,  208,  209 ; 
security  of  the  Government's  land- 
titles  given  to  Indians,  209,  210  ; 
our  own  title  to  the  continent, 
how  it  was  obtained,  210-212 : 
amount  of  supplies  we  furnish  to 
the  Indians,  247,  522  ;  unfortunate 


nature  of  our  covenants  with  them, 
251 ;  the  Government's  theoretical 
acknowledgment  but  practical 
denial  of  the  land-tenure  of  the 
Indians,  254,  255,  —  inconsistent 
action  of,  in  this  respect,  257,  258 ; 
the  nation's  endeavor  in  the  Revo- 
lutionary War  to  secure  the  Indi- 
ans as  neutrals  or  allies,  497,  498, 
501,  502,  504,  —  embarrassed  in 
its  relations  with  the  Indians  by 
the  action  of  England,  505,  507, 
509,  518  ;  our  Government's  early 
concern  lor  its  aborigines,  514,  — 
Congressional  action  concerning, 
515,  527 ;  the  prevailing  opinion 
that  our  Government  has  been  in- 
human and  perfidious  toward  the 
Indians,  516, — remarks  upon  the 
justice  of  that  opinion,  516-518,  — 
three  difficulties  embarrassing  our 
Government  in  this  matter,  518, 
519;  sum  of  benefits  bestowed  by 
the  nation  on  the  red  men, 
521-523  ;  the  Government's  peace- 
medals  to  chiefs,  523,  524,  —  its 
receptions  of  Indian  delegations, 
524,  525 ;  the  three  leading  de- 
signs of  the  Government  as  to  the 
red  men,  525,  526,  —  its  good  in- 
tentions thwarted,  533-535, — rea- 
son for  this  pointed  out,  536  et  seq. ; 
three  mistakes  which  our  Govern- 
ment has  made  in  dealing  with 
the  Indians,  551,  552,  —  its  Indian 
Bureau  and  Peace  Commissioners, 
559,  560, — its  peace  and  war 
policy  in  treating  with  the  red 
men,  wisdom  and  unwisdom  of 
each  considered,  561-566  ;  basis  of 
the  actual  relation  of  our  Govern- 
ment to  the  Indians,  567, — its 
enormous  expense  to  support 
them,  569-571, — its  right  and 
duty  to  use  proper  compulsory 
measures  towards,  572-577,  582, 
584  ;  danger  menacing  our  Gov- 
ernment from  the  Indians  gather- 
ing on  the  northwest  border  and 
forming  alliance  with  English 
power,  574,  575:  necessity  that 
we  should  disarm  them,  583. 


41 


642 


INDEX. 


V. 

VACA,  CABEZA  DE,  the  first  Euro- 
pean who  stood  on  the  banks  of 
the  Mississippi,  and  crossed  the 
continent  from  sea  to  sea,  86. 

Vermin,  Indians  regarded  as,  235. 

Vespucci,  Amerigo,  48. 

Virginia,  wars  in,  between  the  colo- 
nists and  the  Indians,  344,  345. 

Voyageurs,  the,  291. 


w. 

WAMPUM,  Indian,  202. 

War,  Indian  preparation  for,  195. 


Washington,  President,  his  wise  re- 
gard for  the  Indians  exhibited  in 
his  official  action,  528. 

Water-ways  of  the  Continent,  the, 
153-156. 

Wigwams,  Indian,  149,  150. 

Williams,  Eunice,  an  Indianized 
white  woman,  613. 

Williams,  Roger,  his  opinion  of  the 
Spanis-h  and  French  religious 
dealings  with  the  Indians,  74 ; 
his  opinion  of  the  capacity  of  the 
Indian,  99;  his  ideas  of  Indian 
state  and  royalty,  113  ;  his  "  Key  " 
of  the  Indian  language,  421,  422. 


TTniversity  Press  :  John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge. 


